ABC of the German Language - handbook for POWs produced by Y.M.C.A.
One of various items my dad brought back, issued to him in 1943. Very comprehensive with a guide to pronunciation, detailed grammar of the German language and lots of vocabulary, arranged both alphabetically and by subject.
Not sure how useful this phrase would be in a PoW camp: 'Bitte, geben Sie mir ein Glas Wein.'
On Tues 15th May, 1945 my dad was still in Dux waiting to get home:
"The days dragged. We wandered around the town. We received word from Stalag IVC to stay where we were. Evidently, the large towns like Brux and Karlabad were crowded with ex-P.O.W.s waiting to get home and the food situation there was bad. We had enough to live and so decided to stay."
in 1944..........
........from my dad's diaries: a snapshot of life in 1944 in the workcamp of the cement works of Dickerhoff und Widmann, Cossebaude, near Dresden:
"On Fri 1-12-44, we discovered all the cigarettes in the parcel magazine had been stolen. The locks were intact and we never discovered where they went. We had anticipated something like that as soon as the parcels were moved outside the camp. It was a hard blow as Christmas was approaching but we didn’t have a smokeless Xmas as some cigarettes came along as a Christmas Box from Stalag.
I had a rash come out on my face and saw the German doctor who wrote me out a chitty which excused me touching cement. It cleared up after 10 days or so.
During all this time our rations were being cut. On Sat 16-12-44, we were informed of another cut. We were told on parade by the corporal in front of the commandant. Bread ration was now 421 grms daily and margarine 20 grms daily. One fellow called out, ’Is there any cut in the cement?’ That was an example of the spirit in which we received the news.
Christmas Day arrived and we had no work to do either Xmas or Boxing Day. In the evening, the R.A.F. came over twice and we guessed someone was getting a good Xmas ‘gift’. Our parcel store was almost empty by that time and so we decided to have a good feed and say hang the New Year. So we each received 1 Canadian, ½ an English and 1/5 of an English parcel.
Here is what my pal and I did with ours:
Christmas Day 1944
Breakfast Toast. Tea
Lunch
Shepherd's Pie Home-made pudding & milk. Tea.
Tea Meat Roll & Chips. Tea.
Supper Home-made Cake. Tea.
We made our own amusement but did not have the canteen as in the previous year. In spite of that we enjoyed ourselves under the circumstances although we could not forget there would be no parcels after the New Year had arrived.
Soon after Christmas, it started snowing heavily but luckily I didn’t have to work in it as my wrist developed a creak as on the previous occasion. I saw the English M.O. who put my arm in plaster from elbow to knuckles and it remained so for 2 weeks. Again I was in clover - no work.
On Fri 5-1-45 our Xmas parcels arrived, much to our relief. These were issued out immediately on arrival with 41 cigarettes each. Each parcel contained the following articles:
Although a little late, the parcels were exceedingly welcome and gave a real Xmas fare, especially the pudding. We saved one of our cakes for my 26th birthday on the 12th January, (my third spent as P.O.W.) which made it a special day."
The R.A.F. dropped some bombs in Dresden on the 16th Jan which fell either side of the laundry which did our washing. When my fortnight was up, I had to visit the German doctor as it was not possible to travel through Dresden as the trams were not running owing to bombing. The doctor took off the plaster. My arm was very stiff of course and he gave me another nine days off - very generous of him, I must say. I went into Dresden during that time to collect the laundry and I saw the bomb damage which wasn’t bad. The gas mains had been hit and so our geyser was out of action. Our parcels had expired and we were living on German rations and felt the pinch very much. We went to a cinema about 2 miles away on Sun 4-2-45 and the film we had already seen, ‘The Bird Dealers’, was showing but we saw it again. The next day there was another cut in rations which didn’t help at all as we relied entirely on German rations. They couldn’t halve our rations much longer as it’s rather difficult to halve nothing."
Its very difficult to imagine what it was like to spend a Christmas away from home (another year) and with very little to eat. These were certainly brave men.
I feel quite depressed for him and that's with the benefit of hindsight knowing how it ended. 3 birthdays as a POW - dreadful. But the medics seemed to be quite generous - different story to the concentration camps and Japanese POW camps.
@judithg I agree that concentration camps and Japanese PoW camps were something else. My dad wrote that they had access to a dentist in Dresden, also an English M.O. (But we maybe have to remember that these prisoners were required to be fit to do heavy manual work in the cement factory.) Before moving to the workcamp at Cossebaude, they all had vaccination and inoculation in Stalag IV B at Mülberg. My dad thought this type of measure was to protect the Germans working in the factory. Treatment as a PoW also seemed to depend on your nationality. I'm still haunted by what my dad wrote in Sept 43 at IV B: "In the next pen to us were Russian prisoners and their plight was terrible. Every day two or three died of starvation and the Germans treated them cruelly. On more than one occasion the Russians took a dead comrade on roll-call in order to draw his rations."
Dear oh dear. I'm sure you're right about keeping them fit for the job and even in the colditz films there seemed to be a respect for the British prisoners. Poor Russians - all that & then Stalin to contend with.
May 18th, 2012
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