prisoners

Jan

22

1943

On the road to Tripoli

A lorry carrying infantry leaving the outskirts of Tarhuna during the advance towards Tripoli, 25 January 1943.

He was taken as you know by an armoured-car patrol, sent back to Afrika Corps HQ and lodged in a tent next to Rommel’s. He asked to see Rommel but he was away. He had a big talk to his Chief of Staff and was extremely impressed not only by the smartness of the Germans but by their kindness and charm.

Jan

21

1943

Dr Mengele intervenes at Auschwitz

The Auschwitz II-Birkenau main guard house and rail entrance.

For this the S.S. had sound reason. When they opened the waggons, the sight was so revolting that they could not face it. So they whipped in the prisoners to handle some of the dirtiest work that even Auschwitz had witnessed. In some of the trucks nearly half the occupants were dead or dying, more than I had ever seen.

Jan

8

1943

Soviets offer ‘Gingerbread or the Whip’

Soviet troops advancing on Stalingrad.

Your encircled troops are in a grave situation. They are suffering from hunger, sickness and cold. The harsh Russian winter is only just beginning: hard frosts, cold winds and snowstorms are still to come, but your soldiers do not have winter uniforms and are living in unsanitary conditions. You, as commander, and all the officers of the surrounded troops know very well that there is no longer any realistic possibility of breaking through the encirclement.

Jan

3

1943

Survival strategy on the Railway of Death

H Force leaving for the Burma-Thailand Railway.There are few images available to illustrate the Japanese POW camps. Here is a drawing from Changi Prison on Singapore by Des Bettany by kind permission of Keith Bettany. See more of Des Bettany's work at his online exhibition.

Life accordingly evolved into a blur of continuous work, people dying, guards bellowing, heavy loads to be carried, fever which came in tides of heat and cold on alternate days, dysentery and hunger. All those became the normal. Upon them, occasionally, an event super-imposed itself with suflicient violence to be remembered.

Dec

25

1942

Another Christmas for a war weary World

Christmas dinner and celebrations in the wardroom of HMS MALAYA. The ship is based at Scapa Flow.

There was some carol singing last night and this moming. One can’t but feel a certain melancholy at spending Christmas in this depressing camp. An almost intolerable sense of oppression and futility overcomes one at times, as month after wasted month passes. At this time, of course, one thinks much of home, and one realises they must be going through a period of anxiety. And there are many at home who have yet to learn that their relatives out here are already dead.

Dec

21

1942

Struggle to survive on the Railway of Death

H Force leaving for the Burma-Thailand Railway. There are few images available to illustrate the Japanese POW camps. Here is a drawing from Changi Prison on Singapore by Des Bettany by kind permission of Keith Bettany. See more of Des Bettany's work at his online exhibition.

At first he did not question that they were diphtheria cases; but he said that he had no antitoxin and that as Thailand was so backward he could not get any. This is obviously nonsense – there is a famous Pasteur Institute in Bangkok not far away. But Nobusawa was clearly not going to bother himself about it.

Dec

13

1942

Conditions deteriorate inside the Stalingrad cauldron

Russian PoWs who had been trapped inside Staingrad along with the Germans, found starved to death after the Red Army broke through in 1943.

he shelling gradually flattened our positions, which had to be improved. Where could we get building timber? For us and many others, the wooden houses in the suburbs were the only supply of wood, and only daily hunts, which also brought in many other useful things, gave relief; a packet of long nails, wire, and white flare rounds, which I traded for my cigarettes, ensured friendly faces in the position at evening.

Dec

10

1942

New work – in the Auschwitz gas chambers

The Auschwitz II-Birkenau main guard house and rail entrance.

We were lined up in front of the house. Moll arrived and told us we would work here at burning old and lousy people, that we would be given something something to eat and in the evening we would be taken back to the camp. He added that those who did not accept the work would be beaten and have the dogs set on them. The SS who escorted us were accompanied by dogs. Then he split us into a number of groups. I myself and eleven others were detailed, as we learnt later, to remove the bodies from this cottage.

Dec

8

1942

Hunger in a PoW labour camp in Thailand

Food supply and the maintenance of health were the most critical problems to be faced. After the first fortnight, during which British army rations were issued, prisoners had to make do with the Japanese ration scales, which consisted mainly of rice, and it was only gradually that the cooks devised means of making it palatable. Apart from rice, a little tea, sugar and salt were issued, together with the occasional ration of meat or fish. The Japanese refused to allow Red Cross relief parcels to be distributed, so any supplementing of the meagre rations depended on the ingenuity of the prisoners themselves There are few images available to illustrate the Japanese POW camps. Here is a drawing from Changi Prison on Singapore by Des Bettany by kind permission of Keith Bettany. Bettany did not draw the true skeletal figures of the prisoners because he was 'drawing to keep his morale up'. See more of Des Bettany's work at his online exhibition.

I had had this tick fever for 2 days and didn’t go sick for I was sweating on the holiday allowing me to recover but the Nips held a big check roll-call at 10 a.m. and I am afraid, for the first time in my army career I fainted and had to be carried off. Of course their food for the last few days has been bad even for this place and I suppose that had something to do with it also.

Nov

28

1942

Romanian prisoners are escorted off the battlefield

Romanian prisoners of war, they faced a bleak and uncertain future.

On the roads lie helmets decorated with the Romanian royal coat of arms, thousands of cartridges, grenades, rifles. A Romanian strongpoint. A mountain of empty, sooty cartridges by the machine-gun nest. White sheets of writing paper are lying in the communication trench. The brown winter steppe has turned brick red from blood. There are rifles with butts splintered by Russian bullets. And crowds of prisoners are moving towards us all the time.

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