Prisoners of War

Daily exercise for prisoners of war under punishment at Stalag IIIA, Luckenwalde Dust Jacket Front Cover

Dust Jacket Spine

PRISONERS OF WAR (blurb)

During the Second World War approximately 9140 New Zealanders were taken prisoner, 194 of them sailors, 8348 soldiers and 598 airmen, including those interned. Of these, 1270 soldiers were wounded when captured, of whom 107 died in cap- tivity. A further 416 soldiers died from sickness, accident, and other causes.

The great majority of the soldier prisoners were captured in the disasters of the first three years, left on the beaches in Greece or Crete, or were members of units overrun by German tanks. The airmen were those who survived after being shot down over enemy territory.

Their record as prisoners is a magnificent one, an honourable chapter in New Zealand's history, carefully and thoroughly related in this volume.

Dust Jacket Back Cover

Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 Prisoners of War By Authority: R. E. Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand 1954

United States troops arriving at the gates of Oflag 79 at Brunswickon 12 April 1945 Black and white photograph of troops

Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 PRISONERS OF WAR W. WYNNE MASON WAR HISTORY BRANCH DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND1954

Foreword

IN the First World War New Zealand troops fought in Egypt, on Gallipoli, in Palestine, in France and Belgium. Twenty-five men were taken prisoner on Gallipoli, 12 in Egypt, 464 in France or Belgium. None of the few hundred New Zealanders who served in the Royal Navy and in the Royal Flying Corps became prisoners.

In the Second World War our troops fought in Greece, Crete, Egypt, Libya, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Tunisia, Italy and in the Pacific, and 8348 were taken prisoner. Our sailors served in the Royal Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy, and the Merchant Navy in every sea and 194 became prisoners or were interned. Our airmen, in the Royal Air Force and the Royal New Zealand Air Force, fought in every one of the great campaigns waged by the Western Allies; 575 were captured and 23 interned.

The reasons for this remarkable difference are clear and should be put on record.

Between 1914 and 1918 our troops were involved in no disasters. The attack on Gallipoli failed, and in a skilful, unmolested evacuation no one was left behind. There had been two periods of very heavy fighting, the fortnight after the landing and the final effort in August 1915. In each we had been on the offensive, when few prisoners are ever lost. There were no tanks to overrun the units which devotedly and at great cost beat off the great Turkish counter-attacks at Chunuk Bair. In France the New Zealand Division was almost always employed in attacks and in holding the line. A few prisoners were lost in trench raids, and a company of the Entrenching Battalion ran out of ammunition and was captured in the German offensive in April 1918. The British Official History remarks that this was the biggest loss of New Zealand prisoners during the war.

Far different were the circumstances in the Second World War. The 2nd Division shared in one disaster after another, from April 1941 until the tide was checked at Alam Halfa in September 1942 and turned at Alamein on 23 October of that year.

In Greece 1856 prisoners were lost, 242 of them wounded. Nearly half were from the reinforcement companies stranded at Kalamata. The others were lost through transport breaking down or being destroyed, through missing their way, or being left behind after reaching the beaches. For a month after the evacuation the Aegean was dotted with parties escaping in caiques and rowing boats, to Turkey or out of the frying pan into Crete. Hundreds of men wandered in Greece for months; some eventually reached Egypt, some perished; the remainder were captured in ones and twos.

In Crete 2180 men were taken prisoner, 488 of them wounded. Only a few score were captured in the fighting; the others reached Sfakia and were left there under orders to capitulate when it was decided to attempt no more evacuations. Several hundred broke away into the hills. Two hundred of these reached Egypt; the remainder were picked up during the next two years.

In the Libyan battles of November–December 1941, 2042 were captured, including 206 wounded. Most of the others were taken when 6 Brigade and 20 Battalion of 4 Brigade were overrun by tanks. We had few and weak anti-tank guns and our tanks were outnumbered and outmatched. The pattern was always the same. It was necessary to hold the positions, captured with the bayonet in costly night attacks, on Sidi Rezegh and Belhamed. It was impossible to dig deeper than two feet. The Germans acted deliberately, concentrating forty to fifty tanks, followed by one or two battalions of infantry, on a chosen sector. They advanced slowly, lashing the ground with continuous fire. Our few anti-tank gunners, with their little two-pounders, fought till struck down. There was no instance of a gun being abandoned. Meantime the infantry fired steadily with Brens and rifles and mortars, forcing the tanks to remain closed down and keeping the enemy infantry at a distance. But when the anti-tank guns were knocked out the panzers closed. Invulnerable to small-arms fire or mortars, they moved right on to our positions and the only choices were to surrender or die uselessly. Most of these attacks lasted from one to two hours, but the result was always the same. I went over these stark battlefields a few months later and saw the cartridge cases round every fire pit, the piles of mortar shells, the wrecked guns, and the rifles marking the shallow graves. Often the Germans had marked the graves with rough crosses. It was a sombre and unforgettable scene.

During the same campaign 5 Brigade Headquarters and some attached troops at Sidi Azeiz were attacked by 40 tanks, with guns and infantry, and after the seven guns had been knocked out, Brigadier Hargest and seven hundred men were overrun in the same way and had to surrender.

The men captured on these disastrous days had fought splendidly in attack after attack and had lost half their numbers before the end. The morale of the Division was never higher than at this time, yet it was the hard fate of these soldiers to be taken helplessly.

Seven months later, during the most desperate and dangerous months of the war, the Division made its great move from Syria and again plunged into a series of disasters. Almost surrounded at Minqar Qaim, it broke through the encircling forces, leaving two hundred men whose trucks had been wrecked to be taken helplessly in the morning. A fortnight later 4 and 5 Brigades, in a magnificent night attack, carried the Ruweisat Ridge, only to meet disaster in exactly the same way as at Sidi Rezegh and Belhamed. Fourth Brigade, down to half strength through casualties, was overrun by the tank and infantry counter-attack that had become the accustomed sequel to the unsupported but invariably successful night attacks which our infantry in those days had to deliver. In 5 Brigade 22 Battalion, moving in support and actually passing through a German armoured division, was overrun at dawn by the tanks of the same division attacking from the rear. A week later 6 Brigade, having taken its objective by an equally splendid feat of arms, met the same evil fate. That was the last of the disasters. In these three actions 1819 men were taken prisoner, 231 of them wounded.

It is impossible to blame the men who surrendered on these ghastly occasions. I know of no case in which further resistance was possible. The blows could not be evaded and the stage was reached in each case when they could no longer be resisted. What one man said in a report written after he had escaped—‘I had thought of death or wounds, but never of surrender, yet there it was’—could have been said by all.

During the remainder of the war very few prisoners were lost: 178, including 30 wounded, in Africa, 225, including 35 wounded, in Italy; all the result of the minor misfortunes that occur in the most victorious campaigns.

Our airmen prisoners were those shot down over enemy territory. A few evaded capture who came down in occupied countries and had the good fortune to find friends quickly. For most there was no chance of escape.

Most of the sailors were captured with their ships, merchant ships—no warship surrendered. For them also there was no alternative, unless useless suicide is an alternative.

So it came about that over nine thousand New Zealanders spent years of their lives as inmates of enemy prison camps. The great majority of these men were volunteers; it was they and their contemporaries who died or were wounded or, in a few cases, escaped scatheless, who bore the brunt of the years of disaster, and in so doing gained time for the raising of the armies and air fleets of the victorious years. Among them were very many who, with better fortune, would have attained high rank.

As prisoners they endured years of uncertainty, privation and frustration. They unremittingly continued the struggle in every way that courage, pride, and ingenuity could suggest. Some escaped in almost incredible exploits, others continuously strove to escape or unselfishly helped those better equipped. In every camp they bore up against adversity, defied and deceived their guards, maintained discipline, soldierly spirit and pride of race. Only a very few failed.

I saw those who came out of Germany after the war ended. They were thin and strained, but they carried themselves as soldiers and as men who knew that they had acquitted themselves as men in a long and bitter ordeal. I was proud that I had served with them in the hard years.

This volume relates their experience as prisoners, and in doing so records an honourable chapter in New Zealand's history.

H. K. Kippenberger Editor-in-Chief,

New Zealand War Histories

Author's Preface

THIS book is an attempt to set down an accurate, objective, and impartial account of captivity as it affected New Zealanders in the Second World War. Effort has therefore been concentrated on the checking of evidence and the avoidance of facile generalisation; on an impersonal presentation of the facts as they emerge; and on the achievement of a perspective and balance which might be fair not only to the author's compatriots and comrades but to former enemies as well.

A good many unofficial accounts of individual experiences during captivity and of escapes have already been published. But conditions varied a very great deal in different places and at different periods of the war; and individual accounts which often depict only certain exceptional aspects of life in captivity give only a fragment of the whole picture. It is this whole picture which the author has tried to achieve, in the form not of a vague impression but rather of a mosaic built up from a multitude of individual experiences.

It is obvious that an account of the life of prisoners of war and civilian internees from capture to repatriation will tell little of a country's military achievements. But the fact that nine thousand or so New Zealanders were living in enemy territory for periods of up to five years is an aspect of our participation in the Second World War which cannot be ignored. People should be able to get an idea of what happened to their countrymen when they were captured; how the event of capture affected their lives and those of their next-of-kin; what it was possible to do to help them during the war; and what were their needs for rehabilitation.

Apart from the accounts of escapes,

The total number of New Zealand prisoners who escaped from captivity was approximately 718, including 110 who made their way to Switzerland. Of these, approximately 236 were from German hands, approximately 480 from Italian hands, and 2 from Japanese hands. The countries from which the original successful breaks were made were: Greece 44 (approx), Crete 150 (approx), Libya 25 (approx), Italy 455, Germany 12, Austria 27, France 2 (civilians), Hong Kong 2.

the story is on the whole an undramatic one. It tells how thousands of men, many of them at first mentally stunned after their capture and sometimes physically broken after their detention in transit camps, gradually organised themselves into civilised communities on hostile soil. Though such a theme does not lend itself to heroics, it contains some fine examples of courage and self-sacrifice; and daring, determination, and endurance find their place in the narratives of many of those who escaped. Much of the subject matter of this book, therefore, belongs more properly to social than to military history, though what is described arises from the events of war. The last are briefly stated as a framework in which to sketch the community life of thousands of men, and some women, behind barbed wire in enemy countries.

G. M. Trevelyan once wrote that ‘the sum total of social history … could only be mastered if we knew the biographies of all the millions of men, women and children who have lived….’ and that the ‘generalisations which are the stock in trade of the social historian must necessarily be based on a small number of particular instances, which are assumed to be typical, but which cannot be the whole of the complicated truth’. Because the events described in this book are more recent, and because modern records are more voluminous, it has been possible to select those instances which are likely to be the most reliable, and to check doubtful ones with others of the same time and place. Quite often there are not just a few instances but dozens, of fairly certain authenticity, dealing with the same topic, time, and place.

This is not to claim that the book gives the whole story in complete detail. It is obvious that an exhaustive record of more than nine thousand captives, split into hundreds of groups, which lived for up to five years under a bewildering variety of conditions in many different parts of Europe and the Far East, and often moving from place to place, would demand not one but some dozens of volumes of this size. It has therefore been necessary to select from this vast mass of experience that part which is common to the majority of the people concerned. Priority has been given to conditions in camps where large numbers of our people were detained. For the same reason, an effort has been made to avoid devoting too much space to exceptional aspects of life in captivity and over-emphasizing cases of unusual ill-treatment. It has been thought necessary, however, to include some reference to more exceptional sides of the life, in order to give an idea of what an almost infinite variety of experience there was. Since our people usually shared most stages of their captivity with large numbers of other British Commonwealth captives, the conditions for British captives in general have often been given as a background against which to set the individual experiences of New Zealanders.

Many ex-captives may find their own particular experience not set down in detail. It is inevitable also that not every creditable exploit can be described, if only because some of them are not recorded. Only successful escapes

The names of those who received awards, together with others whose escapes seemed sufficiently noteworthy, have been mentioned either in the text or in footnotes.

have been mentioned, unless an unsuccessful attempt had something particularly noteworthy about it. Only those whose capture had been recorded in some way have been regarded as within the scope of this history. ‘Evaders’, who avoided capture but eventually got back from enemy territory, are excluded. In general, people who helped our escapers, and sometimes even villages where they were helped, are purposely not named lest even now they suffer any harm from having once helped British soldiers.

It early became clear to the author that the best way to make intelligible what was selected from this enormous mass of widely varying experience was to fit it into a chronological framework, presenting it stage by stage against a background of events. Each chapter therefore coincides broadly with a period of the war, either in Europe or the Far East. Nearly all begin with a brief account of the main events likely to affect prisoners of war and internees, and go on to give in more detail events which led up to capture, those immediately following, treatment of wounded and interrogation. At this point there is often a subdivision according to the category—Navy, Army, Air Force, or civilian—to which the captive or group of captives belonged, and an attempt is made to trace the journey of each group of captives as far as their first permanent camp. Permanent camps are dealt with in geographical groups according to the country in which they were situated, subdivided according to the categories of captives. The concluding sections of each chapter deal with negotiations and relief work on behalf of those in captivity, and each chapter ends with a brief general summary which attempts to draw together all the threads of the period covered.

For this history there did not exist anything comparable to the War Diaries that are available as basic source material for those portions of an official war history which deal with campaigns. There were periodic reports on permanent prisoner-of-war and internment camps, such as those of the representatives of the Protecting Power and the International Red Cross Committee. But these covered only one aspect of the narrative and, even for that, provided only a skeleton which needed to be filled out with material from individual eye-witness accounts. No useful purpose would be served by trying to record either in this Preface or in footnotes to the text the multitude of documents used, but a summary is given below of the principal sources of these, divided roughly into (a) those which provided the skeleton, and (b) those which filled it out:

(a) 1.

Records of captures, transfers, deaths, etc. (Base Records, Wellington).

Correspondence and various documents on all aspects of captivity (Prime Minister's Department, Wellington; Army, Navy, and Air Departments, Wellington; New Zealand House, London; Directorate of Prisoners of War, War Office, London).

Documents and minutes of the Imperial Prisoners of War Committee.

Various reports, documents, and lists (Military Intelligence Branch, War Office, London).

Prisoner-of-war camp histories (Air Ministry, London).

Reports on camps by representatives of Protecting Powers.

Reports on camps by representatives of the International Red Cross Committee.

Report of the International Red Cross Committee on its activities during the Second World War.

Official History of the War Organisation of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John.

10.

Papers and reports of the Joint Council of the New Zealand Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John.

11.

Various captured enemy documents.

12.

War diaries of No. 1 NZ Repatriation Unit and of 2 NZEF (UK).

(b) 13.

Reports of interviews with ex-captives (New Zealand War Archives).

14.

Narratives of escape or eye-witness accounts by ex-prisoners of war (New Zealand War Archives).

15.

Private diaries of ex-prisoners of war and ex-internees.

16.

Questionnaires filled in by ex-prisoners of war and ex-internees.

17.

Correspondence between the author and ex-prisoners of war and ex-internees.

18.

Interrogation reports of all escapers (Military Intelligence Branch, War Office, London).

19.

Interrogation reports of selected prisoners of war on liberation (Military Intelligence Branch, War Office, London).

20.

Evidence on War Crimes and court proceedings of War Crimes Trials (Judge Advocate General's Branch, War Office, London).

21.

Official narrative of Air Force escapes (Air Ministry, London).

22.

Various joint compilations and publications by ex-prisoners of war and ex-internees.

23.

Books and unpublished manuscripts by individual ex-prisoners of war and ex-internees.

The author has carefully sifted material available in category (b). Where possible, the contributor has been interviewed in order to gain a better idea of his reliability; diaries written on the spot have been given more credence than more polished narratives and impressions written some time after the event. Occasionally this eye-witness material has tended to conflict with official reports, and one version has had to be modified in the light of others.

The collection and thorough processing of the considerable mass of material available on New Zealand prisoners of war and internees alone could have kept a research team occupied for several years. For one person, it has been a question of using what is most ready to hand and in most convenient form. There are gaps which might have been filled by further research and for some of the topics covered better material might possibly have been found. Some errors in matters of detail have already been pointed out and corrected, but the author realises that in a work of this nature and size there may be others. There is reason to hope that they are few and that the overall picture is a true one. The author's thanks go to all those, too numerous to mention here, who by checking portions of the book helped towards this end; in particular, his thanks go to Brigadier W. H. B. Bull, OBE, NZMC, Mr K. W. Fraser, Vice-President of the New Zealand Returned Servicemen's Association, Mr R. H. Johnston and the New Zealand Prisoners of War Association, who checked the complete text, and to Mr E. N. Hogben, who read the proofs and gave much valuable comment and advice.

An impersonal presentation was the one least likely to distort the picture, but the impressions of individuals are introduced where, in the light of all other information, they seem to be fair commentary or at least typical statements of the point of view of the captives. The author has also tried to take into account the point of view of the captors, and to weigh one viewpoint against the other. It is sometimes complained that in official histories objectivity and perhaps even complete accuracy are sacrificed to expediency. There is no foundation for such criticism here. In writing this book the author has had the fullest support in constantly striving to determine the facts of captivity and to present them in a balanced account.

LONDON

15 March 1953

Contents

Page foreword v author's preface ix introduction xxiii Chapter 1: the beginnings of the war in western europe (September 1939–May 1940) I: Early Air Force Prisoners 1 II: Civilians in Europe 6 III: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians in Enemy Hands 7 IV: Organisation of Relief for Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees 12 V: Enemy Aliens in New Zealand 15 Chapter 2: from the fall of france to the offensive in the middle east (May 1940–March 1941) I: Prisoners of War captured in Europe in 1940 20 II: Servicemen and Civilians captured at Sea 35 III: The First Battles in the Middle East 39 IV: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 41 V: Work of Relief Organisations 44 VI: Germans and Italians interned in New Zealand 49 Chapter 3: the campaigns of greece and crete (April–October 1941) I: The Greek Campaign and Prisoners in Greece 53 II: The Crete Campaign—Prisoners in Greece and Germany 60 III: Civilians in Europe 93 IV: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 95 V: Relief Work 99 Chapter 4: the second libyan campaign and after (November 1941–June 1942) I: The Desert Campaign of 1941—Prisoners in Italian Hands 104 II: Prisoners in Germany 126 III: Civilians in Europe 145 IV: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 146 V: Relief Work 150 Chapter 5: the first phase of the war against japan (December 1941–May 1942) I: Japanese Victories 159 II: Early Prisoner-of-war Camps in the Far East 167 III: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 184 IV: Relief Supplies for the Far East 186 Chapter 6: turning point of the war in europe and in north africa (June 1942–July 1943) I: The North African Campaigns of 1942–43—Prisoners in Italian Hands 190 II: Escapers in Greece 227 III: Prisoners of War in Germany 233 IV: Civilians in Europe 255 V: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 256 VI: Relief Work 262 VII: Enemy Aliens in New Zealand 265 Chapter 7: the italian armistice (July–December 1943) I: Events preceding and immediately following the Italian Armistice 274 II: Transit and Permanent Camps in Germany and Austria 291 III: Escapes from Italy after the Armistice 301 IV: New Zealanders captured in the Italian and Aegean Campaigns 317 V: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 319 VI: Relief Work 322 Chapter 8: the middle phase of the war against japan (June 1942–December 1944) I: The Turn of the Tide in the Far East 325 II: Prisoner-of-war and Civilian Internment Camps 326 III: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 350 IV: Relief Supplies for the Far East 353 V: Japanese Prisoners of War in New Zealand 356 Chapter 9: the year of the allied invasion of western europe (January–December 1944) I: The Events of 1944 and German Camps from late 1943 onwards 364 II: The War in Italy in 1944 and Escapes to Allied Lines 410 III: Reception of Ex-prisoners of War in Italy 430 IV: Escaped Prisoners in Switzerland 434 V: Civilians in Europe 438 VI: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 439 VII: Relief Work 442 VIII: Enemy Aliens in New Zealand 444 Chapter 10: the last months of the war in europe (January–May 1945) I: Movements of Prisoners and Liberation in Germany 449 II: Last Escapes to Allied Lines in Italy 472 III: Release and Evacuation of Camps in Austria 476 IV: Evacuation of Prisoners released by Russian Forces 480 V: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 484 VI: Relief Work 486 VII: Enemy Aliens in New Zealand 488 Chapter 11: the reception of liberated prisoners in the united kingdom and their repatriation 492 Chapter 12: liberation in the far east and repatriation (January–September 1945) I: The Last Months of Hostilities and the Capitulation 506 II: Recovery and Evacuation after the Armistice 510 III: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians 518 IV: Relief Work in the Far East 520 V: Japanese Prisoners of War in New Zealand 520 conclusion 524

List of Illustrations

Frontispiece United States troops arriving at the gates of Oflag 79 at Brunswick on 12 April 1945 I. McD. Matheson Following page 126 The guard tower of Stalag 383 R. H. Blanchard Prisoners from Greece and Crete leaving Kokkinia Hospital for Germany, 1941 A. J. Spence British prisoners of war marching back from Sfakia to Galatas, Crete from a German publication ‘Shellfire Wadi’, near Sidi Rezegh P. Curtis collection The compound at Bardia, 1941 British Official After three months in the main transit camp at Benghazi, 1942 H. R. Dixon Delousing in Campo PG 57, Gruppignano M. Lee Hill Lined up for rations, Campo PG 57, 1942 W. A. Weakley Blowers heating up a meal, Stalag IIIA, Luckenwalde J. H. Wilkinson collection Play acting in Campo PG 52, Chiavari, 1942 Inside an Italian working camp on the Austrian border—from a sketch by A. G. Douglas Campo PG 57, Gruppignano, in April 1943—from a sketch by A. G. Douglas Ready for evacuation from Italy to Germany, September 1943 M. Lee Hill To Germany in a cattle truck M. Lee Hill Mess queue for British civilian internees in Ilag VIII, Tost, Germany International Red Cross Working party, Stalag XXA, Thorn, Poland, 1941 International Red Cross Following page 142 Interrogation camp—Dulag Luft, Oberursel J. M. Garrett collection Living quarters for a working camp in Germany—from a sketch by A. G. Douglas A village in the Sudetenland E. C. Cottrell collection Following page 142 ‘Barbed-wire fever’—a cartoon by J. Welch Between the barracks of Stalag VIIIA at Görlitz F. Crandle collection A barrack interior at Stalag VIIIA F. Crandle collection Christmas Eve 1943 inside the perimeter wire, Stalag 383, Bavaria R. H. Blanchard Half of Stalag 383 from the sentry box on the north side R. H. Blanchard Stalag 383—Winter in Germany, 1943–44 R. H. Blanchard Stalag 383—The restlessness of spring R. H. Blanchard Stalag 383—Mud after the thaw R. H. Blanchard Stalag 383—Hut interior at night R. H. Blanchard Stalag 383—‘At the tables’ A. H. Kyle collection Stalag 357 at Fallingbostel—Ablution stand for a group of over 1000 men J. M. Garrett collection Stalag 357—Dividing up swede peelings from the German mess J. M. Garrett collection Stalag XVIIIA at Wolfsberg, Austria—An Anzac Day parade in 1943 J. Ledgerwood collection Stalag XVIIIA—The shoemakers' shop J. Ledgerwood collection Shakespeare played at Oflag VIIB, at Eichstaett G. R. Cowie collection Oflag VIIB—Another play G. R. Cowie collection The handicrafts section of an arts and crafts exhibition at Stalag 383 R. H. Blanchard Following page 322 Manacles used by the Germans on Allied prisoners of war as a reprisal for British action in tying the hands of German prisoners taken in the Dieppe raid Hut interior at Stalag 383 A. J. Spence Lunch from Red Cross parcels R. H. Blanchard A hut scene after transfer from Italy to Germany, drawn by A. G. Douglas during captivity A cartoon on escaping, drawn by J. Welch The punishment fortress of Campo PG 5, Gavi, Italy C. N. Armstrong collection Brigadier James Hargest in his disguise as a French railwayman permission Michael Joseph Ltd Passo Moro, over which some of the escapers from Italian camps crossed into Switzerland P. W. Bates collection Following page 322 A Swiss frontier post D. J. Gibbs collection Escaped prisoners' footwear after reaching Switzerland P. W. Bates collection Men from Stalag 383 at Etehausen during the forced march south R. H. Blanchard A rest during a forced march M. Lee Hill Liberated prisoners waiting to be flown from Landshut airstrip to the United Kingdom R. H. Blanchard collection C. B. Burdekin, OBE, head of the prisoner-of-war welfare section of New Zealand House, London Prisoners of war repatriated from Italy in May 1942 reading mail at Maadi NZ Army, M. D. Elias At Cracow, in Poland, before being transported by the Russians to Odessa W. A. Weakley Reception at 2 NZEF (UK) Reception Group, a cartoon by J. Welch Outside the sergeants' mess at the Reception Group Wing at Folkestone R. H. Blanchard Following page 338 On the Andes on the voyage home R. H. Blanchard Home again NZ Army, F. A. Marriott A Japanese press officer at Shanghai Internment Camp from a Japanese propaganda paper The Argyll Street Camp, Hong Kong International Red Cross Selarang Barracks, Singapore, crowded by the Japanese with 17,000 prisoners of war because they had refused to sign pledges not to escape Australian War Memorial Four scenes in Selarang Barracks A. H. Harding collection Changi Jail, Singapore Australian War Memorial Women's quarters inside the crypt of Changi Jail—painted by Gladys Tompkins during captivity Prisoners of war working on a hillside in Japan M. Menzies collection Unloading sick prisoners from sampans at Chungkai—a painting by J. B. Chalker The Kwei Noi River, seen from a northbound train, Thailand, in October 1945 Australian War Memorial Hospital ward—Thailand Railway, painted by Murray Griffin A trestle bridge on the Burma-Thailand Railway Australian War Memorial Following page 338 Malnutrition case from Hong Kong on a hospital ship The Far East Prisoner of War Social Club A German internee in New Zealand NZ Army, F. A. Marriott Japanese prisoners of war in the Wairarapa, New Zealand Dept Internal Affairs, John Pascoe

List of Maps

Facing page Prisoner-of-war and Internment Camps in Germany, 1939–42 7 2 NZEF Losses in Prisoners of War and Killed in Action 41 Greece and Crete: Escape routes and routes of evacuation by enemy 59 North Africa and Italy, 1941–42 93 The Far East, 1941–44 159 North Africa and Italy, 1942–43 193 Movements of Prisoners of War in Germany, 1944–45 355

Introduction

THERE comes a stage in battle when the members of one side who are still alive, if unable to withdraw, are either incapacitated by wounds, or weaponless, or opposed by incomparably superior force. To avoid a purposeless death they have no alternative but to make some gesture of surrender and throw themselves on the mercy of their enemies. Since, in normal circumstances, no soldier desires to be a prisoner in enemy hands, almost all of those who are captured have surrendered only on finding themselves in one or other of these hopeless situations. To the Western mind of today there is nothing inherently dishonourable in such a choice of action. But this point of view and the enhanced status of captives which it implies have only become widely accepted comparatively recently.

Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the soldiers of a beaten army who surrendered to the enemy had no generally recognised rights. Their treatment in ancient times was at the whim of the victorious commander or of the person into whose power they passed. If they were not slaughtered, they became more often than not mere chattels in the possession of enemy citizens, and their subsequent life was likely to be one of servitude in an enemy country. Indeed, even those of the civilian population of a defeated country who fell without resistance into the hands of the enemy often shared the fate of the troops who had striven unsuccessfully to defend them.

History, however, provides plenty of examples of humane treatment of captives taken in battle both by their immediate captors and by their later masters, no less than of consideration of the local inhabitants by invading enemy forces. Philosophers and religious teachers have at various times been able to influence their rulers against both the ill-treatment of defenceless civilians and the brutal discipline and bad living conditions endured by war captives, practices which might otherwise have gone on being accepted as normal. But it is only over the centuries that there has slowly spread acceptance of the idea that a soldier disarmed and taken prisoner is a defenceless human being with a claim to protection against further violence and ill-treatment; and that, moreover, he is entitled, during his temporary detention, to treatment comparable to that of soldiers of the country in which he is detained. It is less than a hundred years ago that this claim began to receive international recognition.

The first Geneva Convention of 1864, which followed the humanitarian efforts of Henri Dunant and the Geneva Committee of which he was the moving spirit, protected only the sick and wounded of opposing armed forces. Similar provision for the protection and relief of prisoners of war was the next step in the Committee's plans for helping the victims of war. But it was not until 1899, in the Hague Convention dealing with the laws and customs of war on land, that the major powers agreed that prisoners ‘must be humanely treated’

Annex on Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, Section I, Chapter 2, Article 4.

and set down in detail the manner in which this undertaking should be carried out. As slightly amended at the Hague Conference of 1907, this was the authority for the treatment of prisoners in the First World War. For the first time, an international convention with safeguards for prisoners of war against neglect and ill-treatment was applied on a large scale and became widely known.

Approximately a decade after the end of this first world conflict these safeguards were again reviewed. The result was a separate Convention dealing entirely with prisoners of war, signed in Geneva in 1929 by 47 countries.

The British Minister in Berne signed on behalf of New Zealand.

The 97 articles of this Convention covered broadly almost every contingency then thought likely to arise during captivity; and their observance according to a liberal interpretation would have ensured the welfare of prisoners of war from almost every aspect. Thus, some ten years before the events described in this book, a stage had been reached where a considerable part of the world had accepted not only the principle that prisoners should be humanely treated, but the detailed standards of conduct towards them which such an undertaking implied. Paradoxically, the Second World War produced some of the worst examples of the ill-treatment and neglect of prisoners that have been recorded.

For the protection of civilians in enemy or enemy-occupied territory during hostilities there existed at the outbreak of the Second World War only the draft for an international agreement similar to that for prisoners of war. This draft had been approved by the fifteenth International Conference of Red Cross Societies in Tokyo in 1934, and a diplomatic conference to secure governmental agreement to a treaty in these terms was to have been held in 1940. Instead, the International Red Cross Committee had, on the outbreak of war, to invite belligerents either to accept the draft convention or to treat enemy civilians in their hands along the lines laid down by the 1929 Convention for prisoners of war. Both Britain and Germany agreed to the latter alternative, and this was the basis adopted for the treatment of civilian internees in New Zealand.

Two agencies were recognised which might assist in the protection of those regarded as being covered by the Prisoners of War Convention of 1929: the ‘Protecting Power’ and the International Red Cross Committee. The Protecting Power, a neutral government accepted as representing the interests of one belligerent state within the territories of another, was authorised to send either diplomatic personnel or specially appointed delegates to visit all places of internment. These representatives could have conversations in private with prisoners of war and could receive complaints from them. In general they were to act as intermediaries between the prisoners and the camp authorities, and they were to mediate in the settlement of disputes between belligerents regarding the provisions of the Prisoners of War Convention.

The International Red Cross Committee was concerned mainly with the organisation of a central agency for the exchange between the belligerent powers of information regarding their respective captives, and with the distribution of relief supplies to them. But it was also stipulated in the 1929 Convention that there should be no restriction on their engaging in other humanitarian tasks on behalf of prisoners of war, including the visiting of camps and the conduct of negotiations with the governments of belligerent powers.

The outbreak of war in 1939 found the International Red Cross Committee well prepared. As far back as September 1938 it had planned in minute detail the conversion of its organisation to a war footing. Adequate premises and staff for the future central information agency had been arranged; the text of the Notes to be sent to belligerent powers offering its services had been drafted; its future delegates had been selected. By mid-September 1939 the Committee had moved its augmented staff into a large building formerly used by the League of Nations and had set to work.

It is probable that few people of the countries which became involved in the Second World War knew in these early stages anything of the arrangements made to protect their compatriots who fell into enemy hands. In the First World War only 500 New Zealand servicemen had been taken prisoner, and the problems of their protection and relief had not become widely known. Nearly every one of the 9000-odd New Zealanders held captive in the Second World War will say that the last thing to which he had given any thought was the possibility of being captured. A few had heard of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention of 1929, but the vast majority knew nothing of its provisions. To many of them it came as a pleasant surprise to find the extent to which their safety and welfare were protected. It goes without saying that before long nearly all these men had more than a nodding acquaintance with the international law governing their position. It is also true that many thousands of their relatives and friends soon heard of the Geneva Convention and learnt something of the protection it gave. Even with this protection the story of captivity in the war of 1939–45 is at times grim and sombre. The fate of many of those who were without it gives some idea of the terrible story this might have been had protection not existed at all. Those who laboured over the centuries to achieve it have earned the gratitude of humanity.

CHAPTER 1 The Beginnings of the War in Western Europe (September 1939–May 1940)

I: Early Air Force Prisoners

NEW ZEALAND entered the war against Nazi Germany on the same day as the United Kingdom, and some of the New Zealanders at that time serving with the Armed Forces in Britain

These comprised New Zealand officers in the Royal Navy recruited over a number of years; some New Zealanders serving with the British Army; Air Force officers to the number of about 80 recruited with both short- and long-term commissions, including those of the flight organised to take the first Wellington bombers out to New Zealand.

were in action almost immediately. One of the first military tasks of the war was air reconnaissance of the German Fleet and its bases on the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, followed by aerial attack where practicable to prevent the exit of raiders and so help to reduce the dangers to our shipping. On 5 September 1939 a New Zealand officer was piloting an Anson on such a mission near Dogger Bank. He was unlucky enough to have his plane shot down into the North Sea, and recovered consciousness in time to find the attacking German seaplane preparing to land on the water close by. The only survivor, he was picked up and flown to a Luftwaffe hospital on the island of Norderney, where he ‘… was very well treated…. and found the German officers and men good scouts, but all the same [he] was pretty dashed lonely and the fact that [he had] lost [his] crew of three did not help matters ….’ He had good reason for feeling lonely, for he was at the time the only Royal Air Force officer in enemy hands.

In this first month of our participation in the war the German organisation for dealing with prisoners was still in its infancy. For the handful of British prisoners there were as yet no separate camps. Accordingly, after ten days the captured airman was removed to a dark cell in a German detention barracks at Wesermunde, where he was taken each day to the local hospital. It appears that in this early stage guards were a little uncertain how to treat prisoners of war, especially officers; and in the absence of detailed instructions or knowledge of the international law regulating such treatment, some tended to treat them as civilian criminals. After a hungry and generally unpleasant three weeks at Wesermunde, the New Zealander was taken some sixty miles east to Itzehoe. Here, in a camp for Polish officers, he and some other captured Royal Air Force personnel lived under reasonably good conditions. The camp was ‘quite comfortable’ and there was ample space for exercise. But it was rapidly filling up with Polish prisoners, and after a week or so this comparatively pleasant interlude was cut short.

The number of British prisoners steadily grew, and in mid-October all British officers were moved to the high country north of Kassel. There they were housed in a twelfth-century castle perched on a rocky hill, which overlooked the village of Elbersdorf on one side and Spangenburg on the other. Built of grey stone, with a clock-tower and small turret, and surrounded by a deep moat with a drawbridge, this first British ‘camp’ could have been a castle from one of Grimm's fairy tales. Originally a hunting lodge, it had housed prisoners in the Thirty Years' War, but prior to 1939 had been used as a hostel for agricultural students, the interior having been renovated so that it conformed in some degree to modern standards.

By December 1939 this ‘camp’, known as Oflag IXA,

German prisoner-of-war camps were numbered according to the military area in which they were located, e.g., Oflag IXA Spangenburg was in Webrkreis IX. Oflag was an abbreviation for Offizier-lager, or officers' camp. The letters ‘A’, ‘B’, etc., served to indicate different officers' camps in the same area.

contained some thirteen officers and the same number of non-commissioned officers and other ranks. Although, in their opinion, their treatment left a lot to be desired, it is clear that relations with the German commandant were quite amicable. Rations appear to have been rather inadequate, though officers could sometimes purchase extra food through the canteen. Requests for other canteen supplies, ranging from suitcases to wine for ‘celebrations’, seem also to have been met. Other ranks without pay found the food insufficient, and the arrival therefore in November of gift parcels of food and other immediate necessities from the War Organisation of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John was very welcome. Time was killed by playing cards, reading such books in English as could be got hold of, and walking when permitted in a fenced-off exercise area. The airmen found the confinement in the castle irksome, as many hundreds more were to find it as the war progressed. By the end of the year it had been decided that Air Force prisoners were to be in the charge of the Luftwaffe, which would be entirely responsible for their custody and interrogation. The Luftwaffe would build special camps for the purpose, but would meanwhile take over certain accommodation from the Wehrmacht.

German Army.

In the first month of the war the German Army authorities had set up a temporary Off-Dulag,

Abbreviation of German Offizierdurchgangslager.

or officers' transit camp, on the site of a former poultry farm at Oberursel, a suburb four miles out of Frankfurt-on-Main. Here the farm buildings were used as administrative quarters and a two-storied house known as the ‘Stone-house’, formerly for farm pupils, was set aside for the prisoners. The first officers to be held here, some Frenchmen, were moved away to permanent quarters in December, and the Luftwaffe took over the camp site. It was renamed ‘Dulag Luft’, a name by which it became notorious among Allied airmen over the next five years as the main German Air Force interrogation centre and transit camp. The first arrivals were a small advance party of British and French on 15 December from the old castle at Spangenburg. The latter was to be cleared of Air Force prisoners as soon as practicable, but this was delayed by the influx at Oberursel resulting from the German successes in Norway and France. The new camp compared favourably, in some respects, with Spangenburg. An RAF officer wrote:

The setting is not so romantic but the place is modern, warm and clean. The bathing arrangements are V.G.—hot water at any time—and I can get my morning shower which I have missed so much to date. The food is much better.

The Luftwaffe seemed out to show that airmen (even enemy airmen) were worthy of higher standards of treatment than those normal to the Wehrmacht. But concealed microphones had been installed in the living quarters, and the comfort may have had the additional object of encouraging prisoners to relax and talk. As the ‘Stone-house’ was difficult to guard, it had the additional drawback for prisoners that their cubicle windows were fitted with iron bars and that they were locked in from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., with only an hour's exercise twice a day outside the building.

In April 1940 the prisoners, whose numbers had grown to 35, were transferred to three newly erected wooden huts across the road. This came as a pleasant relief from the strictly guarded ‘Stone-house’, which was now reserved for housing prisoners during their interrogation period and for storing records. Each of the two new sleeping huts contained small rooms for two heated by stoves, its own washroom and showers with plenty of hot water, a boiler room, lavatories, and even a sitting room after the guards originally housed in each barrack had been moved elsewhere. The third barrack comprised a large dining room with a stage, two other small officers' messrooms, kitchen, canteen, parcels store, clothing store, and a room for those of the advance party who had become part of the permanent staff of the camp. It contained in fact most of the amenities necessary for the treatment of prisoners according to the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention of 1929. But the Germans found it impossible to mass produce amenities like these when, later in the war, they had to find permanent accommodation for tens of thousands of prisoners from France, from Greece and Crete, from the air offensive on Germany, and from Italy.

It soon became obvious that a large percentage of all Air Force personnel taken prisoner would require medical attention. As additional evidence of their adherence to humane and civilised standards of treatment towards Allied airmen, the Luftwaffe requisitioned part of the nearby Hohemark hospital, 65 beds of which were from then on reserved for wounded prisoners. At the same time a number of private rooms were set aside, ‘ … where high-ranking Allied prisoners of war could be interrogated in circumstances which the Germans considered appropriate to their rank.’

From an Air Ministry report on German interrogation methods.

The comfortable quartering of high-ranking officers in the Hohemark hospital, the convivial parties arranged for them, and the trips into the countryside on which they were taken, were apparently designed to create an impression of friendliness and hospitality in the minds of newly-arrived prisoners, which would help to lull their suspicions and break down their reserve. Medical requirements seem to have been subordinated to those serving an obvious opportunity for interrogation and propaganda. Only the lightly wounded were catered for, the more serious cases being treated in regular military hospitals and not sent to Hohemark until in the convalescent stage. The Hohemark hospital rapidly became a hotbed of activity for the spies and ‘stool-pigeons’

‘Stool-pigeon’ (in prisoner-of-war slang ‘stooge’). Here used to mean a German masquerading as an Allied airman (or other serviceman) or an Allied traitor placed among Allied prisoners of war by the Germans for gaining information of use to German Intelligence.

which the German camp staff began to use as part of their interrogation scheme.

In this early stage of the war little thought had yet been given by the German High Command to the systematic appreciation of statements made by captured airmen, nor in fact to the whole business of prisoner-of-war interrogation. To quote a German report:

Prisoner interrogation and documents evaluation and their intelligence value to the Higher Command, by the Director of Auswertestelle West, 1945 (Translation).

Prisoner-of-war interrogation was organised on a very small scale, without a clear line which was to be followed or definite aims, not to mention a theory or method. The information which was assembled frequently only served to satisfy the desire for sensational news and the detective story romanticism on the part of those on the distribution list.

This was borne out by what is known of the first commanding officer of Dulag Luft, ‘whose qualifications for the job consisted of an ability to speak some French.’ The same report also blames the ‘amateurish manner’ in which ‘unsuitable persons’ attempted to carry out a preliminary interrogation near the place of capture, with results detrimental to later questioning. It was found necessary for the German High Command to issue an order in October 1939 forbidding such interrogation of Air Force prisoners and the ‘souveniring’ of equipment and prisoners' personal effects which often accompanied it. The report goes on to refer to the impossibility of segregating Allied airmen or preventing them from conversing while on their way to the interrogation centre, and so improvising a story or boosting each other's morale. The first installation of microphones in the barracks of Dulag Luft also apparently bore little fruit, as ‘the voices of 50 prisoners produced nothing but a hopeless din in the headphones’. But, whatever may have been thought of the shortcomings of the interrogation centre in its early stages, a system was soon established by which all Air Force prisoners were transported to Oberursel after capture and put through an interrogation routine before being released to a permanent camp. The staff thus gradually became specialists in interrogation on Air Force matters, and as time went on a formidable organisation was built up under the control of the Intelligence Section of the Luftwaffe operations staff.

Letters from prisoners indicate that the Germans in control of Spangenburg and Oberursel were, in the earliest stages, not only ‘correct’ in their treatment but also perhaps even kindly. An officer wrote, when he was leaving Spangenburg, ‘The General came up to say goodbye to us, which was a very nice gesture. I have told you before we liked him very much ….’ On his arrival at Oberursel, the same officer wrote, ‘The C.O. and 2nd in Command both appear very nice and speak English.’ At this period of the war, confident in their country's military strength already demonstrated in Poland, German prison-camp officers could perhaps afford to be ‘nice’. The British blockade had not yet taken effect, nor had extreme Nazi influence made itself felt among prison-camp staffs. Enemies tend to be more gentlemanly at the beginning of a struggle than after it has become a matter of life or death. On the prisoners' side there is evidence in these first weeks of something akin to a schoolboy holiday spirit, as yet unaware of the dreary years ahead and revelling a little in relief from responsibility and former routine. With the approach of Christmas these high spirits were tempered with nostalgic thoughts of home and anxiety about mail, mingled with vague hopes of a possible exchange of prisoners and the first ideas about escape.

II: Civilians in Europe

It is not known how many New Zealand civilians were on the Continent at the outbreak of war, either in Germany or in countries likely to come under German control. A good many were able to leave before the invasion of Poland, but some chose to stay even after the German entry into the Low Countries and France. Their position became officially known only as inquiries concerning them reached the Government in New Zealand or the High Commissioner's Office in London. Of the numerous inquiries some sixty related to people who had been born in New Zealand or who had acquired New Zealand citizenship. Most of them were people living in the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. But there were nurses, teachers, evangelists, and art students temporarily working in France and Holland, as well as others who had settled there. There were also smaller numbers in Poland, Denmark, and in Germany itself.

No immediate wholesale rounding up of British civilians took place in Germany or Poland, and only a few hundred who might constitute a danger if left at liberty were interned up to the end of October 1939. Some of those seeking repatriation were able to make their way to England after hostilities had begun.

The same applied to German nationals in England. Only a comparatively small number were immediately interned, and up till April 1940 small parties of them were returning to Germany through Belgium and Holland.

For those who had not arrived in England the usual practice was to initiate a ‘whereabouts and welfare’ inquiry

The phrase used by the United States Embassy in Berlin. Inquiries were also made through the International Red Cross Committee.

through the Protecting Power. This was a lengthy process, the inquiry going through the British Foreign Office to the United States Embassy in Berlin and so eventually to the locality where the person was living. Often news would not be received for some months, especially if the person was one of those not interned.

For the latter the most urgent problem was financial assistance. Many were living on pensions or other income derived from England or New Zealand. When these payments ceased, these people, especially those who were unable to earn a living locally on account of their age or their nationality, were almost destitute. To relieve urgent distress in such cases as came to their notice, the United States Embassy in Berlin made small advances, which the British Government, and later the New Zealand Government, undertook to refund. Through the same channel relatives and friends in England or New Zealand could send remittances (limited by Trading with the Enemy legislation to £10 sterling a month) on application to the Trading with the Enemy Branch in the United Kingdom or to the United States Consul in Wellington. Beyond the arrangement of financial assistance, little could be done except to open the way for some direct communication with relatives. In December 1939 it became possible to send 25-word family messages through the International Red Cross Committee.

The scheme had been first used by the International Red Cross Committee in the Spanish Civil War. The first messages from Germany were sent in December 1939 and the first from the United Kingdom in February 1940.

Prisoner-of-War and Internment Camps in Germany 1939-42 Colour map diagram showing location of prisoner of war Internment Camps

For those interned, not only was communication much simpler

It was practically the same as that for prisoners of war.

but relief in kind, including contributions from relatives, could be sent by New Zealand House in London through the British Red Cross

For the sake of brevity and the avoidance of confusion with other war organisations, the War Organisation of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem is henceforward referred to in the text as the British Red Cross, the abbreviation adopted in the discussions of the Imperial Prisoners of War Committee.

in much the same way as for prisoners of war.

III: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians in Enemy Hands

It had been arranged beforehand that if and when war broke out, the United States should assume the responsibility of protecting the interests of British subjects in Germany. Although there existed international treaties for the protection of prisoners of war, it was not known whether the Nazi Government would accept responsibility for the actions of a previous German Government in signing or ratifying them. Early in September the United States Ambassador in Berlin made approaches to the German Foreign Office in order to determine to what extent Germany was prepared to honour these treaties. By 19 September he was able to quote a German Foreign Office official as saying that, ‘ … as Germany had adhered to the Geneva Convention of July 17th 1929, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war (Reichs Gesetzblatt II April 30th 1934), the German Government would be governed accordingly’. Britain had already given an assurance that she intended to abide by the terms of this Convention. Thus the rights of British prisoners in Germany were guaranteed on paper at least.

One of the first tasks of the United States Embassy staff, as representative of the power protecting British interests, was to trace British civilians in German territory, ascertain their condition, and if necessary arrange financial assistance for them. From the beginning it had to deal with a constant stream of requests for this kind of action. In addition, as soon as the existence of an internment camp was heard of, one of the Embassy staff in Berlin or a member of the consular staff elsewhere in Germany was sent to investigate and report fully and candidly on the conditions he found. One of the earliest of these reports drew attention to defects in the civilian internment camp at Wülsburg, Ilag XIII.

Ilag (Interniertenlager), camp for internees.

It may appear picturesque, but the fact is that the Wülsburg Castle is an old and run-down building which presents a dilapidated appearance…. In my opinion the camp is overcrowded…. The air is bad, the light is bad, there is no space for a man to put his things…. In bad weather the situation is in my opinion next to unbearable….

This system of inspection and reporting kept the British Government informed on the unsatisfactory aspects of German treatment so that the appropriate protest could be made.

Immediately after the outbreak of war the International Red Cross Committee placed itself at the service of all belligerent governments, ‘ … to contribute in a humanitarian way, in its traditional role and with all its resources, towards lessening the evils brought by war.’

Letter to all belligerent powers from IRCC (signed by M. Max Huber), dated 2 September 1939.

At a time when national hatreds were aroused, it was able as a long-established neutral and impartial body to remind leaders of belligerent states of their treaty obligations and of considerations of humanity towards their fellow human beings even though enemies. In pursuit of these objects it proposed to organise:

(1)

a Central Agency for information about prisoners of war, with which it invited Information Bureaux

Set up by belligerent powers under Article 77 of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention.

to get in touch,

(2)

the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners, and of medical personnel,

(3)

the forwarding of letters and parcels,

(4)

the co-ordination of unofficial relief measures.

So far as civilians in enemy hands were concerned, it invited the belligerents to abide by the Tokyo Draft of 1934.

See Introduction, p. xxiv.

It also reminded belligerents of the special position of medical personnel during hostilities. At the same time the Committee wrote to national Red Cross societies to inform them of its appeal to the belligerent governments, and to request their co-operation both in drawing their governments' attention to humanitarian considerations and in themselves facilitating the exchange through the Central Agency of news regarding war victims.

As soon as possible the Committee sent special missions to Germany, France and Poland, and permanent delegations to Great Britain, Egypt and the Argentine,

The Argentine delegation was to be the base for South America.

as the latter countries were less easily reached from Geneva. Besides organising a base for future operations and arranging for liaison with the Central Agency at Geneva, the first task of these missions was to visit prisoners' camps. These visits were usually entrusted to doctors, as, ‘…. Knowing just how much trained men can endure without undue risk, medical practitioners are less easily impressed than laymen by apparent deficiencies not detrimental to health. On the other hand they are able to recognise defects which would escape the inexperienced eye.’

Report of the IRCC on its activities during the war of 1939–45, Vol. I, p. 66.

Similar visits to civilian internment camps, the securing of information through national Red Cross societies regarding non-interned civilians, and the arranging of 25-word family messages through the British and German Red Cross organisations were also part of their duties.

The Central Agency

As laid down in Article 79 of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention, 1929.

for information about prisoners of war was opened in the Palais du Conseil-General at Geneva on 14 September, formal notification of its establishment being sent to the governments concerned and contact made with the bodies doing similar work in those countries. Three days later the first requests for information regarding prisoners of war were received and passed on by International Red Cross delegates, and the Central Agency began the card-indexes, files, and correspondence which developed into the enormous record system for which it became well known.

Up to 30 June 1947 the correspondence alone amounted to: Inward 59,000,000 pieces Outward 61,000,000 pieces

Prisoners of war information bureaux were set up in London and Berlin, and from the latter official lists of British prisoners and their particulars were eventually transmitted to the United States Embassy and the Central Agency in Geneva. But as the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention specified that addresses as well as other particulars were to be given, compilation of the lists was held up until the prisoners reached permanent camps. In the meantime the only information obtainable came in reports from the International Red Cross Committee, based on what its own delegates or the local German Red Cross and other bodies had been able to ascertain, or in the prisoner of war's own letters. It sometimes happened that mail from a prisoner in enemy hands reached his friends or relatives before the two enemy governments were able to communicate officially concerning his capture.

Thus the first report about a missing New Zealand airman came over the German radio a few days after his capture. Many such notifications were broadcast in the years following, usually in the ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ and similar sessions,

Broadcasts in English over the German radio during the war by a British subject working for the enemy under the radio name of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’.

to induce friends and relatives to listen to interpolated propaganda. But the Air Ministry took no official cognizance of these early messages about captured airmen, and their distrust was later justified when many were proved inaccurate or out of date. The next information usually arrived about six weeks later in the form of a letter from the man himself. But although this was accepted by the Air Ministry for practical purposes, it was still not regarded as official confirmation of capture. It was not until about eight weeks after capture that the Central Agency of the International Red Cross was able, in answer to an inquiry, to supply authentic information regarding a man's condition and location. This aspect of the prisoner-of-war problem was kept constantly under review by governments and service ministries, and means were found later to make some reduction in the time taken.

See Chapter 3, p. 98.

It had been early decided in the United Kingdom that, following the precedent set in 1914–18, the Army authorities should have the task of dealing with enemy prisoners and civilian internees. By reason of the experience it gained in these matters, the Prisoners of War Branch of the War Office became the body best qualified to advice generally on anything to do not only with enemy prisoners in our hands but also our own in enemy hands. However, as matters relating to Navy and Air Force prisoners often needed the expert opinion of their own services, as the Home Office had to be consulted about civilians, as Treasury opinion was necessary on financial matters, and as the Foreign Office was the channel of communication with the Protecting Power, an inter-departmental committee with representatives of these departments was set up in 1940. This committee dealt primarily with financial questions. It held its first meeting in May 1940 and continued until May 1941, when it became a sub-committee of a newly-formed Inter-governmental Committee on Prisoners of War.

Meanwhile, in the first days of the war, British Commonwealth civilians in enemy-occupied territory were an urgent claim on the energies of the Foreign Office. The latter accepted the responsibility

The British Red Cross also undertook inquiries through the International Red Cross Committee representatives in enemy countries.

for making inquiries about them through the United States Ambassador in Berlin. In addition to individual inquiries, the Foreign Office was also concerned with the broad questions of repatriation and internment, with the arrangement of funds for those without means of support, and with arranging for messages and letters from relatives to reach those in the German-occupied portion of the Continent. In this it was often merely acting on requests from the Home Office or the Dominion governments concerned, and serving as the channel of communication (through the Protecting Power) with the German Government. But the Foreign Office also accepted the responsibility for determining the international implications of all messages sent through it to enemy powers. And in order to assist the co-ordination of Allied strategy, New Zealand adopted from the first the principle of communicating with the enemy only through the Foreign Office, though this principle was not formally stated until November 1941.

Minutes of meeting of the Imperial Prisoners of War Committee held on 5 November 1941, para (5).

The departmental arrangements in New Zealand followed the pattern of those in the United Kingdom. The Army was the service branch made responsible for the custody of enemy nationals in New Zealand. Partly through this experience and partly through direct contact with the British War Office by means of the New Zealand Military Liaison Officer in London, it became the main advisory body on all matters relating to the treatment of prisoners of war and of interned civilians. The Prime Minister's Department at first handled in detail all inquiries regarding New Zealand missing and captured personnel, but as the task grew it became merely the co-ordinating body in this field, as it became in all others relating to the country's war activities. It kept in close touch with the British Government through the Dominions Office in the interests of consistency of action within the Commonwealth.

Many of the inquiries concerning civilians in enemy territory or missing servicemen came in the first instance to the High Commissioner's Office in London, and many others, which could be more easily dealt with in England, were referred there from New Zealand. In London information was gathered through diplomatic and Red Cross channels, and passed on to those requesting it. Arrangements were also made in London for the translation of money gifts into relief in kind. This was done through the British Red Cross, which was at that stage the only body empowered to send parcels to prisoners of war and civilian internees. The High Commissioner's Office in London, by thus acting as an intermediary between the agencies in closest contact with New Zealanders in enemy hands and their relatives and friends, was able to keep a constant eye on their interests.

IV: Organisation of Relief for Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees

At the beginning of the war British nationals in German hands depended almost entirely on the British Red Cross for all the little comforts that made life in captivity more bearable; later they were to depend on its relief supplies very largely for the essential elements of their survival. The British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem had acted jointly in carrying out relief for prisoners of war, missing, and wounded in the 1914–18 War, and the War Organisation then set up had remained alive in the interwar period in the form of a committee which cared for the disabled. Acting on this experience of the First World War, it formed in September 1939 an Emergency Committee, which organised a Prisoners of War, Wounded, and Missing Department. This Department was approved by the British service authorities in October as the body through which parcels might be sent to British prisoners of war. It began its work, including the packing of parcels, in St. James's Palace, which the King had placed at its disposal as a headquarters.

The Department's original plan of relief for each prisoner comprised an ‘initial parcel’ containing personal clothing and necessities for the period immediately after capture; three eleven-pound food parcels each fortnight; an eleven-pound ‘personal parcel’ every quarter in which relatives could send articles and medical comforts; and bread parcels, though these were soon discontinued because of the time taken in transit. All parcels were at this stage addressed to individual prisoners

Collective consignments as envisaged in Articles 43 and 78 were not started until later in the war.

in accordance with Article 37

Article 37 reads: ‘Prisoners of war shall be authorised to receive individually postal parcels containing foodstuffs and other articles intended for consumption or clothing. The parcels shall be delivered to the addressees and a receipt given.’

of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention, and so could not be sent off until the British Red Cross had received notification from the War Office of the prisoner's place of detention. However, in October 1939, at the request of the Air Ministry, some initial parcels were sent off to Geneva by air, for distribution to captured airmen as soon as the International Red Cross Committee should learn their locations. They were followed by food, invalid comforts and warm clothing, including some personal kit, and the first of them reached the prisoners within a month. This was the beginning of a service which was to continue until the end of the war, though later on parcels usually took very much longer to arrive. As the war progressed, the British Red Cross parcel service became a vital factor in the health and welfare of all British subjects in enemy lands.

Early in the war the British Government stipulated that all food parcels should be sent through the British Red Cross, which devoted considerable effort to devising an optimum content for a standard parcel.

The estimated number of British prisoners before the battle in France was 1500 from all Commonwealth countries. Even when prisoners were as few as this, the items were analysed by a dietitian and approved by Lord Dawson of Penn as comprising the right proportions of starch, protein and sugar to keep a man in health.

It is laid down in Article 11 of the 1929 Geneva Convention that ‘the food ration of prisoners of war shall be equivalent in quality and quantity to that of depot troops.’ But it was taken for granted that, even if this provision were adhered to, differences between the prisoners' own normal diet and that of the nation holding them might justify making the despatch of food parcels a first priority. The first letters from prisoners in Germany, especially other ranks, left no doubt of their need for supplementary food.

The remainder of the British Red Cross relief plans quickly took practical shape. An Invalid Comforts Section was set up in October to provide medical supplies and invalid foods for sick and wounded prisoners. A reserve of greatcoats was established at Geneva, to be sent on by the International Red Cross Committee to each newly-captured prisoner, and an initial parcel

Contents of an initial parcel: vest, pants, shirt, scarf, pyjamas, jersey, balaclava, socks (3 pairs), mittens, handkerchiefs (4), boots or blanket.

was sent as soon as the name and location of the prisoner was received. Relatives were then asked to let the British Red Cross have any items of clothing that they wished to send. If nothing was forthcoming, another parcel

Contents of the second parcel: vest, pants, shirt, pyjamas, slippers, braces, socks (2 pairs), towels (2), handkerchiefs (2), boots or blanket.

containing clothing and toilet necessities was sent off. Limited by the British Government to one every three months, these parcels, some of which contained gifts from relatives, were the beginning of what came to be known later as ‘next-of-kin parcels’. From December 1939 these were all sent through the British Red Cross, for the postal censorship authorities asked the latter to undertake the examination of all parcels from relatives. Cigarettes and tobacco too could only be sent ‘under Red Cross label’, and so were at first included in every food parcel. Although the original relief plans included books to enable men to study while in captivity, transport difficulties delayed their despatch. But early in 1940 an attempt was being made to determine the precise educational needs of each camp so that a scheme could be worked out to cater for all.

From the beginning of the war the World Alliance of YMCAs, the IRCC, and other bodies in Switzerland all sent books to prisoners of war and civilian internees.

No serious difficulty arose at this stage over the transport of all these parcels: the General Post Office accepted them for transmission by post, and they were shipped to Ostend and through neutral Belgium into Germany. At the beginning of the war, therefore, the maintenance of a steady flow of relief to prisoners of war in Germany was as simple as it had been through Holland in the First World War. But the events of succeeding months made it necessary to provide relief on a scale not before experienced nor foreseen. Moreover the German occupation of the Continent so complicated the transportation of these relief consignments that it created a supply problem of major proportions.

In New Zealand the Joint Council of the Red Cross and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem,

For the sake of brevity this will be referred to in the text as the New Zealand Joint Council, or simply the Joint Council.

which had been in existence since 1934, followed the example set by the equivalent joint body in England. It formed a War Committee soon after the outbreak of war along the lines of the War Organisation formed by the Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England. In November 1939 it cabled the British organisation for advice on how it could best assist. To help co-ordinate the national war effort and to prevent waste and overlapping, the Patriotic Purposes Emergency Regulations (introduced by the New Zealand Government in October 1939) had placed the raising and spending of all funds for patriotic purposes in the hands of a national advisory body.

With eleven provincial branches.

The National Patriotic Fund Board, in whose hands was placed the administration of all moneys raised under this scheme, appointed the Joint Council one of its collecting agents. It also appointed it the sole agent for expending funds on behalf of sick and wounded, prisoners of war, and civilians in distress as a result of hostile action. Although no organised campaign for funds was launched until May 1940, some sixty cases of clothing were forwarded to overseas Red Cross organisations for the relief of refugees on the Continent and evacuees to the United Kingdom, and some parcels were also sent for prisoners of war.

Considerable detail has been given in order to show that from the first a number of governmental and other agencies were watching over the welfare of those in captivity and taking steps to ensure that relief supplies reached them. There was also the problem of coping with the requests of their relatives and friends. Prisoners and internees were at times worried about their own situation; but many of their relatives and friends, especially those on the other side of the world from the war theatres, were in a more or less constant state of anxiety. Many of them felt they could visualise the life of their son or husband on active service, but his possible fate as a prisoner was, in the early stages of the war, something unknown and frightening. For relatives the initial shock of receiving a ‘missing’ notification (however tactfully worded) often gave way to a period of mingled depression and hope, during which they tried every expedient to get information. People wrote to the ‘Red Cross’, to their Member of Parliament, to the High Commissioner in London, to the Prime Minister in Wellington. Often all that could be done was to send a sympathetic and reassuring answer, for it was at first some time before any definite information could be given, owing to the long delays in official notifications of capture. Relatives and friends of a civilian in an enemy country had a similar period of anxiety in the early days of the war, until welfare reports came through from either the Protecting Power or the International Red Cross Committee.

Official news that a man was a prisoner of war and in good health did something to relieve the anxiety of relatives about his safety, but could not prevent further anxiety about his future welfare. Relatives and friends often pictured him as continually hungry, cold, and comfortless; and they wanted to know what food, clothes, books, tobacco and money they could send. Knowledge that the British Red Cross was catering for his immediate needs, though reassuring, did not weaken their desire to make their own personal contributions, or at least to do something practical to help. As the war progressed, the Joint Council harnessed this desire to the war relief effort, by inviting relatives and friends to help on local committees and parcel packing organisations. Such work often had a value beyond the number of man-hours supplied towards war relief. For many of those who took part felt less despondent and frustrated once they became engaged in practical tasks which they knew would be of use in bringing help to their own men in captivity.

V: Enemy Aliens in New Zealand

At the same time as she was safeguarding the interests of her own men and women abroad, New Zealand was engaged in securing herself against danger from enemy aliens within her own shores. In view of the potentially dangerous international situation in 1938, the New Zealand Government had in that year empowered the already existing Organisation for National Security to take such preliminary steps as would not leave the country unprepared in the event of war with Germany. This organisation, which comprised representatives of the Services, of the Department of Internal Affairs, of the Police and of other interested departments, set up committees to cover various aspects of the national emergency which hostilities would create. Among these was an Aliens Committee for deciding how to deal with enemy nationals living in New Zealand and her dependencies, so as to safeguard the interests of the country without contravening either international agreements or humane standards of conduct. As a result of the Alien Control Emergency Regulations 1939, all aliens (to the number of 9000) had to register with the police. The latter kept up-to-date lists of their names and whereabouts, and had little difficulty in a small population like that of New Zealand in keeping track of their activities and opinions.

The interest of the police in aliens had begun much earlier. In February 1934, for example, the Auckland police were keeping a watch on the activities of the Auckland German Club, where it was known that a Nazi group had grown active under the encouragement of successive German consuls with Nazi sympathies. By August 1939 the necessity for internment was being investigated, but it had been decided as a matter of policy to take into custody only those aliens with pronounced anti-British views, whose liberty would probably constitute a public danger. Arrangements were by then in hand for the arrest and detention by the police, on an order from the Attorney-General, of any persons whose records or whose open hostility warranted it. They were to be handed over to military authorities in twelve convenient centres throughout the Dominion, the Army being thereafter responsible for their custody both in transit and during interment. Although there were 786 Germans in New Zealand and 535 in Samoa, it was not anticipated at the time that the number interned would be more than fifty, and it was decided to set up a single central internment camp.

In the 1914–18 War the treatment of interned aliens by New Zealand, as a matter involving her relations with another state, had been laid down by the British Government. In October 1939

The period following the First World War had seen a speeding-up of the evolution of the Dominions as self-governing states responsible for their external affairs no less than their internal administration. In 1931 they were given recognition as sovereign states in British constitutional as well as international law by the Statute of Westminster. Although New Zealand declined to ratify it, she was forced in time to follow the example of her more nationally conscious sister Dominions. New Zealand's ratification took place at the end of 1947.

the New Zealand Government, although by then possessing full power of independent action in this field, decided in the absence of any other precedent to use the British Government's proposed course of action as a working basis for their own. The United Kingdom, in the spirit of the Tokyo Draft,

See Introduction, p. xxiv.

was referring all doubtful Germans and Austrians to special tribunals to determine whether in the interests of national security they should be interned, or subjected to special restrictions, or left at liberty. If they were to be interned, they were to be placed in special camps apart from prisoners of war.

In order to centralise the transmitting to Germany of information regarding Germans anywhere in the Commonwealth through one channel, namely the Prisoner-of-War Information Bureau in London, Commonwealth governments were asked to submit details of any action taken regarding enemy aliens. By 25 November New Zealand was able to report that the German consular staff of eleven had left for Germany, that 19 others were also on their way to their countries of permanent residence, and that up to that time no Germans in New Zealand had been arrested or interned. So far as Samoa and the Island Dependencies were concerned no Germans had left; but 14 were interned in Samoa, 29 (including two women) had been released on parole, and a further 15, including the president and secretary of the former Samoan Nazi Party, were coming to New Zealand for internment. The property of internees was to be vested in a Custodian of Enemy Property and ‘the utmost consideration was being given to their comfort and social needs.’

Government official statement released in Wellington on 28 November 1939.

Details had been given to the Swiss Consul as the representative of the Protecting Power for German interests in New Zealand.

Somes Island had been the site of New Zealand's camp for civilian internees in the 1914–18 War, and it was again selected for this purpose in 1939. Situated in Wellington Harbour at some distance from the mainland on every side, its 120 acres of high grassland planted with trees contained a number of buildings easily adaptable to the needs of an internment camp. The island was taken over by the Army authorities, and the first batch of German internees was landed by ferry boat on 23 December 1939.

No women or children were interned there and the treatment of the men who were was based on the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention of 1929, camp standing orders consisting largely of extracts from it. Everything within reason was done for the comfort and welfare of those interned. They had single or double cubicles, bedding which included a kapok mattress, five blankets, sheets and pillowcases, and ample bathrooms. They were given plenty of excellent food, the same in fact as that prepared for the camp staff, and generous free issues of good clothing. They shared a canteen with the camp staff and were supplied with additional comforts by the Salvation Army, the Society of Friends, the New Zealand Red Cross Society, and also by individual wellwishers. From the same sources they received books and from the New Zealand YMCA games and recreational material, including two billiard tables. They enjoyed freedom to move over the whole of the island from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., with permission to fish and bathe; the privilege of six visitors once a week; ample provision for letters and parcels. On one occasion during the summer of 1939–40 the camp commandant, ‘to alleviate the monotony of life on the island’, even arranged a launch trip round Wellington Harbour. But although this was at the expense of the internees, it was not considered advisable to repeat it.

Despite all this it needs little imagination to see that being interned was a matter of some inconvenience and resentment for many of those taken to Somes Island. The more politically minded succeeded to some extent during the early days in organising a campaign aimed at wearing down the camp commandant and the guards by pin-pricking annoyances. This was to develop into open insolence as the war progressed and the news of German successes became known.

* * * * *

The period covered by this chapter, referred to variously as ‘The Phony War’ or ‘The Twilight War’, was filled with suspense and uncertainty for many of those whose lives had become entangled in the war. Prisoners in enemy hands were wondering whether the whole conflict might not soon finish, and so relieve them of doubts about whether to attempt an escape and about the correct course of their actions in general during captivity. Civilians in enemy countries were often surprised at the moderation of their treatment, and those in internment camps were wondering whether they might not soon be released to their homes. Next-of-kin were solicitous for news and filled with anxiety about quite often exaggerated hardships which they visualised their captive relatives enduring. They had not yet realised what long years of captivity and separation lay ahead. Governments and service departments were uncertain whether they should commit themselves to large-scale organisation for dealing with possible large future batches of prisoners. The International Red Cross Committee

The IRCC had set up a ‘Commission for Work in Wartime’ in September 1938.

and the national Red Cross war organisations, whose purpose it was to deal with emergencies such as war, and with specific problems arising from it such as alleviating the lot of prisoners, went ahead and set up the machinery blueprinted for them. The main burden of the early relief work for Commonwealth captives fell on the British Red Cross. But though this body was pressing for expansion and campaigning for more funds in the first six months of the war, there were many who did not then realise the importance of the work for prisoners and internees on which it had embarked. There were, moreover, few who foresaw the scale

Before the evacuation of Dunkirk there were some 1500 in enemy hands; the total number of British Commonwealth prisoners who fell into enemy hands was over 300,000.

on which this work would increase before the war was finally over. In the remaining months of 1940 all this hesitation at home was to give way before the certainty of a long and bitter struggle. For those in German hands, their hopes of early release dispelled, there remained only the vague possibility of escape or the bleak prospect of years of helpless captivity in an enemy country amid the restrictions and shortages of a long war.

CHAPTER 2 From the Fall of France to the Offensive in the Middle East (May 1940–March 1941)

I: Prisoners of War captured in Europe in 1940

THE lull that followed the first air raids and naval actions of the autumn of 1939 gave way in the spring of 1940 to the unforeseen series of events in Europe which changed the whole aspect of the war. In April, after the leaflet raids over north-west Germany, came the ill-fated Allied expedition to Norway. In May the German land offensive through the Low Countries ended with the fall of France and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force. In August and September the British air victory over the Luftwaffe narrowly averted a land Battle of Britain. The respite thus afforded gave Britain a chance to reorganise her forces, and in the months that followed she began the strategic bombing of Germany which was to continue until the end of the war.

Small numbers of New Zealanders in the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force took part in all these operations. Some were members of the crews of naval vessels or Fleet Air Arm planes. Others were with British Army units in the land operations on the Continent. New Zealand airmen took part in the Norway expedition; in the fighter patrols and close-support bombing of the land battle for France and in the fighter screen over Dunkirk; in the fighter defence of Britain and the bombing of the German invasion ports; and later in the long-range bombing of Germany itself. The heavy fighting and the Allied withdrawals brought a new flood of prisoners into German hands. It was almost inevitable that a proportion of the New Zealanders in action should be among them, and by the end of 1940 the number of our servicemen prisoners in Europe had risen to fifty or more, the majority of them airmen.

Some airmen who crashed or baled out on to enemy territory were able to evade immediate capture. A few of these made their way back to England, usually with the help of local inhabitants in enemy-occupied countries. The rest, after dodging about in a game of hide-and-seek with the occupation forces, usually fell into the hands of German troops, collaborators, or the Gestapo. A good many airmen were however picked up by enemy troops where they landed,

After the arrival of German forces in North Africa, some of the British airmen shot down in that theatre of war who fell into the hands of German troops were flown to Germany. A New Zealand warrant officer had this experience in March 1941.

or in the immediate neighbourhood. German military personnel had detailed instructions for dealing with crashed Allied aircraft. They were to ‘remove’ the airman from the wreck, if necessary ‘rescue’ them and extinguish fires, prevent them destroying equipment and documents, segregate them one from the other, put a guard on the aircraft and the prisoners, and finally inform the nearest German Air Field command so that the latter could take over. All Wehrmacht units and police in the vicinity of the crashed aircraft were to maintain increased vigilance in order to round up any of the crew who might have evaded capture. As soon as possible the Air Field command staff took over guard duties on both prisoners and all captured equipment, and then sent on particulars of the prisoners by teleprinter to Dulag Luft at Oberursel. It was forbidden, under pain of court martial for ‘sabotage of the Defence of the Reich’, for members of the Wehrmacht to take away the personal property of prisoners of war. This was less out of respect for the right of a prisoners to his possessions than because of their possible value to the interrogation centre. After a search for escape materials, the entire personal property of each prisoner was taken over by the German Air Field Headquarters, which kept it in a separate envelope and issued a receipt.

Within twenty-four hours fit prisoners were supposed to be despatched in third-class train accommodation to the interrogation centre at Oberursel.

From these and similar journeys from Dulag Luft to permanent camps attempts at escape were made from time to time, though no ultimately successful escape of this type is recorded.

On the journey they were to be prevented as far as possible from communicating with each other, an adequate scale of guards being laid down to ensure this. If immediate despatch was not possible, prisoners were to be accommodated overnight at the local military headquarters, where there could be better surveillance than at a local police station. Thus, on paper, security was very high. In practice, however, human weakness and sympathy defeated many of the aims behind these strict and detailed orders. A New Zealand officer records that he was ‘well treated by an Austrian officer who knew English—he went as far as to [advise us] not to be forced to say anything as the Germans could not [force us to speak], and if bullied or shouted at to stand on one's dignity as a British officer.’

Wounded prisoners were sent immediately to the nearest German Air Force hospital if hospital treatment was necessary; otherwise their wounds were usually quite adequately treated by the nearest unit medical officer. Sometimes in cases of urgency it was necessary to place a captured airman in the nearest German Navy or Army hospital, but the Luftwaffe saw to it that he was transferred to one of its own hospitals as soon as his physical condition permitted. At all types of military hospital the treatment seems to have been as good and as expert as that given to the German wounded there. A New Zealand warrant officer writes:

Taken to Zuiderziekenhuis Luftwaffe hospital in Rotterdam and X-rayed. Found to have broken vertebra, and received good treatment for over a month, especially from Dutch staff who had been taken over with the hospital. German doctors applied treatment prescribed by Dutch (civilian) doctor who arrived before them at the crash….

As soon as the wounded prisoner was well enough he was transferred to Hohemark,

The hospital attached to the interrogation centre and transit camp at Oberursel. See p. 4.

where

Medical service [was] indifferent, but only slight or convalescent cases were taken. Food and quarters excellent, walks every day for those able…. [Staff] augmented by volunteer R.A.F. personnel with some experience obtained good results.

Medical skill was, it appears, not necessarily the main recommendation for appointment to the staff of Hohemark. At one period the administration tried German nurses who could speak good English, the idea being that they could extract military information from a prisoner while nursing him. His reserve was apparently to be broken down by a combination of comfortable and relaxing surroundings, services demanding his gratitude, and feminine appeal. The experiment was not a success. It was abandoned for want of sufficient results, the official explanation being that the nurses used were not of a ‘suitable’ type. It is not clear whether this referred to their inability to make the required impression on their patients or to their being themselves susceptible and sympathetic enough to forget about interrogating them. After a short time they were all replaced by elderly male medical orderlies.

The Germans themselves characterised the accommodation and food at Hohemark as ‘on a peace-time basis’. They came to the conclusion that for most prisoners of war a stay at the hospital was ‘a real holiday compared with what they had gone through from the time they took off on their last mission’. In spite of these efforts to make the prisoner more comfortable and so more friendly and less vigilant, the results of hospital interrogation appear to have been meagre. Those in command of the Oberursel interrogation centre were by no means pleased with the amount of intelligence which came to them from this source, but for the time being they had no remedy to suggest.

Though now housed in a separate building at the Oberursel camp and building up extensive records, the interrogation centre had not yet attained the machine-like efficiency of its later periods.

Interrogation of the former German commandant and other staff of the interrogation centre showed that ‘business-like’ methods were not introduced until November 1941.

The staff was still small—five interrogators only—and the ‘pressure’ does not seem to have been applied anything like as seriously as it was in the middle and later years of the war. On their arrival prisoners were certainly placed in solitary confinement, but in what are described by various prisoners of this period as ‘good quarters’ or ‘a quite comfortable small room’. And the treatment there seems to have been reasonable, at all events by comparison with the experiences of those who passed through in subsequent periods. The whole atmosphere seems to have been in complete contrast to that which was later to earn the Oberursel ‘cooler’ such a sinister reputation.

The first step in the interrogation was the presentation of a long list of questions on a form marked with a Red Cross.

The ‘Red Cross’ marking was omitted from later forms.

This the prisoner was asked to fill in ‘in order to facilitate sending particulars regarding his capture through the Red Cross to his relatives.’ In some such vein the interrogator endeavoured by friendly chat over a cigarette (for which purpose he received a special daily allowance) to persuade the prisoner to give the required answers. It seems that the idea of the ‘Red Cross form’ was derived from Article 77 of the 1929 Geneva Prisoners of War Convention. This charges all belligerents with prompt notification of captures together with ‘all particulars of identity’, and gives a list of the latter which should be noted down (‘as far as possible and subject to the provisions of Article 5’):

… the regimental number, names and surnames, date and place of birth, rank and unit of the prisoner, the surname of the father and name of the mother, the address of the person to be notified in the case of accident, wounds, dates and places of capture, of internment, of wounds, of death, together with all other important particulars.

Italics are the author's.

The last phrase coupled with the unfortunate reference to ‘unit’ no doubt provided a pretext for the German interpolation in their questionnaire of several additions

The additions were: Service; profession; religion; whether married; number of children; pay; when, where, and by whom shot down; squadron; group; command station and its number; letters and number of aircraft; state of health; particulars of crew.

designed to obtain intelligence for the High Command. And the fact that the clause quoted above was to be read in conjunction with Article 5 (which exonerated the prisoner from stating anything other than his name, rank, and number) was glossed over. Very few airmen fell completely for this ruse, as some of the questions were quite blatant in their attack on security; but there were also very few who gave only their name, rank, and number.

After the business of the Red Cross form there followed the interrogation proper a day or so later. Armed with all the details of the prisoner's private and service background which the interrogation centre Documents and Records Section had been able to piece together, the interrogator attempted to engage the prisoner in apparently innocent conversation, and at the same time to impress him with a display of the information already possessed by German Intelligence. An officer prisoner who was interrogated by the camp commandant describes him as ‘most charming’, and goes on to say that he ‘talked mainly of the East Indies, told me who I was and where I came from in England, target, etc.’ The next step was to surprise the prisoner into making comments on operational matters and possibly also on those relating to politics and morale. For this the German interrogation officers adopted a friendly approach, especially in the early part of the war, as it gave the lie to the picture of the ‘brutal Hun’ built up by Allied publicity in the mind of the young airman. Moreover this method was invariably used with officers, as they sometimes felt bound to converse out of courtesy after treatment which was most hospitable even by ordinary standards, let alone those of an enemy in time of war. Another officer who was also interrogated by the camp commandant mentions that he ‘chatted amiably for half an hour, producing cigarettes and liqueurs’, and that ‘towards the end of the conversation he briefly commiserated my sad fate and then casually asked’ questions on operations. Apparently the ‘friendly approach’ in this form did not always achieve the expected results, for it underwent considerable modification later.

As soon as the interrogation process was completed the prisoner was released from his cell, given back his personal possessions, and sent into the transit camp or ‘overflow’ across the road to await despatch to a permanent camp. Here his creature comforts were lavishly attended to—showers, clothes, good meals—his stay varying from a few days to three months according to whether or not it was thought that any further information might be extracted from him. For in the compound the Germans endeavoured by means of stool-pigeons and microphones concealed in some of the rooms to glean further scraps of intelligence. In the early stages of the war a good many Allied prisoners were caught off their guard by the set-up at Oberursel and unwittingly gave away much valuable information.

The number of Allied prisoners who yielded to the blandishments of the Germans and agreed to spy on their comrades was happily small, and their success was in the German view very limited. There were a few who belonged to the Mosley Party or held other political views which made them susceptible to German propaganda, but most were ordinary men of ‘commonplace’ background. They were used mainly in the early days as camp staff in the Oberursel ‘overflow’ and in the Hohemark hospital. Their main assignments were to check up on identifications of units, to gather information on politics or morale, and to give warning of any impending attempt at escape. Although the Germans paid them for their services, they admit that their neglect of stool-pigeons caused the latter to be less effective and often led to their discovery. Once it became known that the compound contained these ‘stooges’, their value was largely gone, for security measures were taken by the prisoners against careless talk, and most of the few traitors were forced to desist through fear of discovery and consequent retribution.

A New Zealand officer describes the Dulag Luft of this period as a ‘German show camp’. Another calls it ‘a model camp’ and goes on to say that ‘after six months’ previous experience in rather bad conditions as a prisoner of war this was absolute luxury.' Huts containing separate rooms for two or three beds with sheets and pillowcases, plenty of space, and even sports fields seemed indeed palatial after the makeshift accommodation experienced by many prisoners while being escorted back.

The fall of France in the summer of 1940 brought such a large influx of prisoners to Dulag Luft that the thousands of French were segregated in a separate compound for the first time. In the British compound the Germans interfered with the prisoners' daily life as little as possible, two roll-calls a day by a Luftwaffe officer being almost their only intrusions. The internal organisation of the camp was left to the senior British officer, who was also the official channel for communication with the German camp commandant, the International Red Cross Committee and the Protecting Power. The various camp activities—canteen, clothing, entertainments, sports—were run by officers or NCOs whom he appointed. Every officer contributed to a camp fund which financed the purchase of food for the messes, the orderlies' pay, and the pocket-money issued to new prisoners to buy toilet necessities from the canteen on their arrival. The sick were treated by a German medical orderly in a medical inspection room, the nearby Hohemark hospital being available for anything serious. A civilian dentist in Oberursel did the dental work.

Red Cross food parcels had been available from the opening of the camp, but were in short supply during the period following the fall of France until new supply routes were established. This break in supplies unfortunately coincided with the cutting down of prisoner-of-war rations to the scale allowed to German civilians. All Red Cross food was pooled to ensure that new arrivals should share equally with those who had been in the camp some time. The Germans, although bound by the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention to supply prisoners with clothing and footwear,

Article 12 states:

Clothing, underwear and footwear shall be supplied to prisoners of war by the Detaining Power. The regular replacement and repair of such articles shall be assured….

would issue no clothing except to those whose uniforms were lost or in rags. Moreover they insisted on rigid control of the issue of Air Force uniforms sent by the Air Ministry through the International Red Cross Committee, on the grounds that surplus clothing might be used to assist escape. Nevertheless the camp clothing officer was able to see that each newly-arrived prisoner did not have to go about dressed in a manner damaging to his self-respect and to the prestige of the Royal Air Force.

Prisoners at Dulag Luft were allowed to go for walks on parole in the countryside with a small German guard and to use for sports a field adjoining the barrack area on the south side, which had been enclosed by a six-foot barbed-wire fence. Sports equipment distributed through the International Red Cross Committee made it possible to play a variety of games, and permission was given for early morning swimming during the summer of 1940 in the Oberursel public open-air swimming bath. Educational books sent by the British Red Cross and by the World Alliance of YMCAs through Geneva enabled the studious to pass the time profitably. Many took the obvious opportunity to teach themselves foreign languages, and others to study topics related to their own civilian jobs. There was as yet very little ordinary reading matter. Once a week a variety show or a revue was produced on the small stage in the main messroom, the Germans permitting the hire of local costumes on condition that they were not used for escaping. On Sunday the same messroom was used for religious services conducted by the prisoners, though Roman Catholics were occasionally allowed to attend Mass in Oberursel. As several New Zealand ex-prisoners who were there in this period expressed it, the treatment was ‘very reasonable indeed’. A delegate of the International Red Cross Committee gave it a glowing report:

This camp is the best of its kind visited in Germany. A well regulated, clean and nice camp. In addition to the physical comforts provided, an endeavour is made to alleviate the mental depression present in persons in confinement.

It is said that the morale of prisoners at Dulag Luft was very high, partly as a result of the spirit of comradeship and solidarity established by some of its earliest inmates. Doubtless an adequate supply of material goods fairly distributed must share the credit, as it did in most prisoner-of-war camps. There can be little doubt that the sensible policy adopted by the senior British officer at an early stage did much to obviate possible later causes of grievance. His aim was to create among those in the camp a cohesion based on mutual confidence, which if not quite that of a service unit, would at least present a solid front in the presence of the enemy. Thus there was a common mess for senior and junior officers; a communal pool of all camp food supplies from which all ranks received the same food; a communal pool of clothing from which only those in real need of it were supplied. The minimising of the privileges of rank, a scrupulously fair distribution of available goods, a friendly welcome to new prisoners coupled with a few words of advice, all helped to weld the prisoners into a community united against the enemy outside the wire. When it came to a question of escape or any other action, co-operation might then be assured.

It was sometimes imagined that discipline and co-operation inside a prisoner-of-war camp could be taken for granted, since prisoners of war were still servicemen and would give, even after capture, unquestioning obedience to their senior officers. But capture often produced a considerable loosening of the bonds that gave a service unit its discipline and morale. In the first place it was only too obvious that those really in command were no longer the senior officers but the enemy guards, since they were the only ones with the means of enforcing their authority. Secondly, senior officer prisoners might not always have the qualities necessary to make a successful prisoner-of-war camp leader. To inspire confidence a leader had to show that he was completely unselfish about food and personal comfort. He had to ensure that everyone in the camp always received a fair share of everything, taking a firm line if necessary with those of no matter what rank who tried to get more than their share. He had to be indefatigable in negotiating with the enemy to improve conditions in the camp and to protect its inmates from ill-treatment. Finally he had to bear hunger, cold, and other discomforts cheerfully, and by this example and other means help maintain the morale of his fellow prisoners.

In the maintenance of morale news of the war and of the outside world was a considerable factor. In Dulag Luft this was made easy when early in 1941 the Germans installed a radio receiver. All the European and American programmes could be heard, and the senior British officer saw to it that news bulletins were made available to the camp at large. In this period of disasters there was nothing in the German news bulletins that might have given logical grounds for belief in a final Allied victory. In spite of this, most officers and men maintained in their speech and attitude the proposition that Britain always wins the last battle; and apparently such illogical stubbornness usually left the German guards in baffled amazement.

By virtue of its role as an information-collecting agency and as part of the security organisation of the Luftwaffe Intelligence Branch, Dulag Luft was in this period saddled with the censorship of the incoming and outgoing mail for all Air Force prisoners in Germany. It was not until later, when numbers increased and this additional burden proved too great to cope with, that the duties were placed elsewhere. Besides this the transit camp had to look after its own security by ensuring that nobody escaped. From the first, the German security system attached importance to the examination of parcels entering a camp. But the volume of parcels received by British prisoners made through searching of them impossible without the employment of enormous staffs. Conscientious as some of the searchers were, the sheer necessity for clearing space to admit new deliveries prevented the strict examination of everything; and the searchers, especially Wehrmacht personnel not belonging to the security branch, were by no means all conscientious. Thus food and tobacco tins were at first all opened and often emptied, but later those from Red Cross sources received no examination

Red Cross societies, the British Red Cross, the Joint Council, and the International Red Cross Committee were scrupulous in seeing that safe delivery of their consignments was not prejudiced by any breach of censorship regulations. They never used them to convey contraband articles.

and many others but a cursory one. Clothing parcels were usually checked for civilian shirts, ties, and other garments, but the German examiner could often be persuaded to let some pass. Games parcels were searched for escape aids, and all books had to be read for anti-Nazi views as well as for possible assistance to would-be escapers. While much was found by the German censorship staff, a good deal got past them.

If in the earlier part of 1940 the Germans had not yet got down to anti-escape measures in earnest, neither had the prisoners got down to the business of escaping. Spring had brought the leaflet raids and speculation whether the whole war in the West might not just peter out. And if so what was the use of trying to escape? With autumn came the realisation of a long war ahead, and escape took on a new meaning. A committee was formed and schemes were thought out. In all but the most temporary transit camps the first escape schemes were as a rule based on tunnelling, and three tunnels were commenced in Dulag Luft in this period. One of them was successfully completed in May 1941, when 18 officers got away. They were all recaptured within a short period, but the break was doubtless a shock to the German staff of Dulag Luft. From then on camp staff, selected from ‘men inclined to accept imprisonment passively’,

The phrase is that used in the British Air Ministry Camp History of Dulag Luft.

were the only prisoners retained in the camp for any length of time, and likely escapers especially were quickly passed on to permanent camps.

Although the German High Command had decided at the end of 1939 to construct special permanent camps for Air Force prisoners, none had been completed up to the middle of 1940. From Dulag Luft, therefore, prisoners were still being sent on to camps where there was a mixture both of arms of the service and also of nationalities, although the latter were by now usually in separate compounds. Officers went to Oflag IXA at Spangenburg, already described, and other ranks to Stalag XIIA at Limburg, not far north-west of Oberursel, or to Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf in Silesia.

In this period the accommodation at Spangenburg

In this period its designation changed from Oflag IXA to Oflag IXA/H.

had been increased by the addition of a group of half-timbered buildings in the village below the castle, these being known as the Unterlager (Lower camp) and the castle as the Oberlager (Upper camp). Before this expansion the Upper camp had become very over-crowded—a phase which usually preceded any addition to living space for prisoners of war. British other ranks acting as orderlies for the camp were particularly cramped. To make matters worse the plumbing in the old castle, having deteriorated badly during the winter, was still being repaired well on into the summer. This meant having tub baths instead of showers, carrying buckets of water instead of turning on taps, and other inconveniences which brought life in the castle to some extent back to its medieval pattern. Partly because of this and partly because of the defective ventilation from small windows through which there penetrated only narrow shafts of sunshine, the whole place had become damp. And the dark, grey stone walls, the concrete floors, and the clammy air combined to create a depressing atmosphere except on very sunny days.

It may be imagined, therefore, that in spite of a general prisoner-of-war prejudice against having to move, many were not unwilling to be transferred to the village. But even there the old-fashioned buildings had to be closed for a period while renovations were done, including the installation of steam-heating, which fortunately was functioning in both camps by the winter of 1940. The transfer of the remaining French officers made the camp an entirely British one, Navy and Royal Air Force officers remaining in the castle and Army officers going down to the Unterlager. But though the space was ample for a time, convalescents discharged from hospitals and a steady flow of airmen brought the numbers up to about 300 in each camp by the end of the year.

The amenities of the castle were improving with the passage of time. The Germans had been persuaded to allow the use of a small piece of ground near the castle as a football ‘kick-about’ area. A gymnasium attached to the castle had been made available. Two plots of ground had been set aside for the prisoners to cultivate. A pleasant, medieval-style room served as library, which by numerous consignments of books from England and Geneva soon possessed an excellent stock. German daily newspapers and illustrated periodicals were delivered to the camp regularly. Musical instruments could also be bought, and an orchestra had been built up. Walks in the neighbourhood for officers on parole not to escape

The giving of parole by British officers had been forbidden by an Army Council Instruction of 15 February 1940 and similar Navy and Air Force instructions. But the practice of giving a temporary parole for exercise, recreation, and medical treatment was recognised when a new order was promulgated in early 1942.

were permitted twice a week, but the commandant insisted on guards ‘to protect prisoners against possible insults from German civilians’. Some officers protested that they were prepared to take the risk of anything the German population might do; others complained that the imposition of guards under such circumstances was a slur on the honour of the officer who had given his parole. But no amount of argument was of any avail. ‘No guard—no walks’ was the German standpoint, and it remained so in most German camps throughout the war.

The camp at Limburg, Stalag XIIA, was a convenient dumping-ground for other ranks from Dulag Luft, being no more than 25 miles away. As far as can be ascertained, however, most Dominion personnel found their way to Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf, not far from Breslau in Silesia, a two-day journey by cattle-truck. It is described by a visitor as a ‘classically’ typical prisoner-of war camp.

At this stage of its history it already boasted sixty barracks laid out in long rows with ‘streets’ between on a huge area of sandy flat. Its population counted some 3000 Poles and 8000 British, with 6000 of the latter out in working detachments. The barracks, in which they were locked at night, were of a type that had become standard in prison camps for other ranks. Each half-barrack held three-tier wooden bunks for 180 men and additional space for tables and forms; and between the two halves there was a small concrete personal ablutions room and a similar one for washing clothes. Hot or cold showers were organised by the Germans in a separate building. There was at this stage no canteen, and in any case no pay was received except by those on working parties.

70 pfennigs a day, at pre-war rates of exchange about 11d. (1 Reichsmark = 100 pfennigs) ‘In the industries and trades prisoners of war received 60 per cent of the rate paid to civilian workers. In agriculture prisoners of war received a very small daily wage, but they were fed and lodged by their employer.’—IRCC Report on Activities during Second World War, Vol. I, p. 287. (See also note 3 on p. 85.)

There were practically no facilities for indoor recreation and entertainment, even if lighting and heating had been adequate for their enjoyment; so that resort was had to organised sing-songs to relieve the dullness. The camp's sole redeeming feature was the space within the perimeter where prisoners might exercise. A New Zealand prisoner captured at sea, who had been in the holds of two ships and through three transit camps, describes it as ‘the worst camp we had so far experienced in every way.’

It is apparent that without relief supplies from Red Cross and other sources it would be difficult for such a camp to be bearable over a length of time. Even when food parcels arrived there were no facilities for cooking the contents, other than crude stoves made by the prisoners themselves. Nevertheless there seems little doubt that neither the discomfort of the camp nor the arrogant harshness of the guards after the Dunkirk evacuation quenched the spirit of the inmates. Their resiliency and adaptability in those first dark months were something on which in later years, with the aid of all the relief supplies poured in from outside, the camp population was able to build up a position of moral superiority over its guards.

By July 1940 the first permanent camp for Air Force prisoners of war in Germany was ready for occupation. The site which had been chosen was near the town of Barth, on a small peninsula jutting out into the Baltic almost due south of Copenhagen. It consisted of a few single-storied wooden barracks clustered together on a sandy flat, not much more than five feet above sea-level. Twenty-one officers sent from Dulag Luft, Oberursel, in July 1940 were the first to occupy the two officers' barracks. They were joined by parties from Oflag IXA/H, Spangenburg, and later by further parties from Dulag Luft, to make a total complement of about 200 in which were members of each of the Commonwealth Air Forces as well as of the Fleet Air Arm. At the same time NCOs transferred from Stalag XIIA, Limburg, and from Stalag VIIIB, Lamsdorf, together with parties from Dulag Luft—a total of some 500—occupied three similar barracks in a separate compound. All the barracks were subdivided into small rooms and each contained a kitchen where Red Cross food could be cooked. Sanitary and washing facilities were included in each officers' barrack, but those for NCOs were in a separate building. An extension to one of the officers' barracks was used as a messroom.

A senior prisoner in each compound became responsible for internal organisation and for dealing with the German camp administration. On the whole prisoners were allowed to administer their own affairs, the Germans conducting an occasional search or inspection of barracks and holding two roll-calls daily. The latter were at first rather perfunctory counts, but in November 1940, following several escapes, they became individual roll-calls and remained so for nearly eighteen months. The prisoners' organisation was similar to that already described for Dulag Luft. To pay for fresh vegetables and other communal purchases made through the canteen for both officers and NCOs, and to provide the latter with funds for minor expenses, all officers paid a levy proportionate to their rank into a camp fund. Such a practice became almost universal in camps containing both officers and other ranks, and was later extended to provide for other ranks of the same country or unit in another camp. In Barth financial assistance of this type was provided for merchant seamen's camps. The Geneva Prisoners of War Convention provides for a percentage of canteen receipts to be set aside for the establishment of a camp welfare fund. The German camp administration took 10 per cent of the value of all canteen sales, but it does not appear to have been used on behalf of the prisoners. Sick prisoners were cared for reasonably well, in spite of meagre medical supplies, by a German medical officer and German orderlies in a sick-bay situated in a Vorlager

A fenced-off area between the prisoners' compounds and the camp entrance, containing German administrative and living quarters.

outside the compounds. Serious cases were sent to nearby hospitals, and dental work was done by a Luftwaffe dentist who visited the camp weekly.

In the first few months only a few Red Cross food parcels addressed to individuals captured before May 1940 arrived at the camp, October bringing the first consignment to the senior British officer. Though this was still too small for a full distribution, quantities received gradually increased until, half-way through 1941, full weekly distributions became possible.

By this time the breakdown in deliveries due to the fall of France had been repaired by the establishment of the new route round the coast of Spain.

But it was a hungry period as the German rations,

Estimated at the time as about 1500 calories a head daily.

although supplemented by small amounts of fresh vegetables purchased from the canteen, were insufficient to meet the rigours of a German winter; and even these were reduced when the supplies of Red Cross food became regular. Nevertheless by then the camp escape committee was able to reserve a certain amount of food for use by escapers.

It was not until about six months after capture that a prisoner's first quarterly clothing parcel arrived. Up to the time when bulk supplies of British uniform began to arrive in May 1941, the Germans issued captured French, Belgian, and Polish uniforms and other clothing to any prisoner who needed it. This captured uniform was naturally not a satisfactory substitute, and the arrival of RAF battle dress enabled those temporarily without proper uniforms to take pride once again in their personal appearance.

Although there was a sports field in an adjacent compound, shortages of guards forced the Germans to curtail its use to about twice a week. With this restriction, the shortage of food and the lack of equipment, not much sport was played in the first year, except a little soccer and some ice-hockey on a home-made rink. Autumn 1940 brought a great demand for books, and a small library was formed from private contributions. As time went on this was supplemented by parcels sent through the International Red Cross Committee and by the purchase through the canteen of continental editions in English. In the winter one or two educational classes were started in spite of a lack of books and writing materials, there having been practically none at all in the first six months. An RAF staff duties course petered out through lack of interest. Such a fate befell most prisoner-of-war courses on service matters and was probably due to the remoteness, for a serviceman behind enemy barbed wire, of any opportunity to apply them. Courses in escape work, practical techniques, languages, or contract bridge were by comparison consistently attended. A pantomime for Christmas 1940 set going a series of theatrical and, later on, musical performances with instruments bought out of camp funds. A German padre held regular church services for the NCOs, officers taking their own services, until the arrival in mid-1941 of an officer of the New Zealand Church Army who thereafter acted as padre.

The first ideas about escape brought from Spangenburg and Oberursel were followed up intensively at Barth, which by its nearness to the Swedish coast seemed almost an answer to an escaper's prayer. In addition there were working parties, compulsory for aircraftsmen and voluntary for NCOs; and from a farm, a fish-packing factory, or a flourmill escape was at first relatively easy. Indeed the escape record of Stalag Luft I

Stalag Luft was the original name of the camp, but the number I was added later to distinguish it from other Air Force camps. The title Stalag Luft I is used here to avoid confusion.

for the first nine months of its existence shows considerable activity. Besides a number of unsuccessful tunnel schemes, thirteen officers broke out of the camp and twelve NCOs were able to get away from working parties. This was enough to keep any set of camp guards on their toes. But German security was for some time not highly developed, and had escape planning, control and security not been at a similar stage of development many more attempts might have succeeded. The efficient camp departments which were built up later to deal in almost professional fashion with disguise, forged papers, photographs, food, maps, compasses, and other gadgets were as yet non-existent. Such work had to be shouldered by the individual, or at most a handful of associates. Not until the summer of 1941 were the foundations laid of the first of such large escape organisations.

The anti-escape defences of Stalag Luft I consisted of a double barbed-wire fence eight feet high with concertina wire in the six-foot space between, corner sentry-towers with searchlights and machine guns, a sentry patrol outside the fence, which was lit at 20-yard intervals, a warning wire 15 feet inside the fence, a dog patrol in the compound at night, and some attempt at control of persons and vehicles passing through the gate. The pattern was typical of German prisoner-of-war camps. In February 1941 the security (Abwehr) officer was given two assistants to keep an eye on the compounds and to control searches. Their nickname of ‘ferrets’, given as a result of their frequent crawling under the barracks, stuck to Abwehr personnel for the rest of the war. The Abwehr were also mainly responsible for the examination of parcels entering the camp as they were at Dulag Luft, and were often similarly swamped into inefficiency by the magnitude of that task. For the same reason they were often dilatory about the searching of new arrivals and of the barracks. But the first discovery of a tunnel at Barth in January 1941 brought a thorough ransack of the offending barrack, lasting a week and involving the evacuation of the occupants, the tearing down of wallpaper, and the emptying of mattresses. Then began a kind of search blitz culminating in searches on 28 successive days in May 1941, but gradually petering out in the summer.

At first attempted escape was punished by five days in a cell for a first offence, ten for a second and so on, with normal rations and Red Cross food, the escaper being later returned to his compound or perhaps sent to a camp such as Colditz.

Oflag IVC, Colditz, was a camp for troublesome prisoners (later for prospective hostages too), officially no different from any other except for being more difficult to escape from. In fact it was a comfortless old fortress, and the staff was less ‘correct’ and the treatment considerably harsher than at other camps.

But escape activity assumed such proportions that the attitude of some German camp commandants became much more severe, and exasperation sometimes drove them into imposing reprisals on the whole camp. At Barth measures such as short-clipping prisoners' heads and a month of successive daily searches, although within the letter of the Geneva Convention, were in intention reprisals and therefore a contravention of its spirit. The rights of a would-be escaper under international law were often similarly circumvented by the imposition of long sentences for trumped-up charges based on the German civil code. ‘Sabotage of the Reich’ was often the excuse for getting rid of a persistent escaper with a sentence of several months' duration.

Articles 50 and 54 of the 1929 Geneva Convention made escape by a prisoner of war punishable only by ‘disciplinary punishment’, limited to 30 days' imprisonment.

II: Servicemen and Civilians captured at Sea

Besides those who fell into enemy hands in the course of land and air operations, a number of British Commonwealth subjects were captured at sea. German U-boats and surface raiders had begun their attacks on British merchant shipping in the first week of the war, and by the latter part of 1940 German marauding craft had penetrated into most of the sea-routes of the British Commonwealth. On 25 November of that year it was known that the MV Port Hobart on her way to New Zealand from the United Kingdom had been attacked by an enemy raider. Nothing more was heard of her until a British warship reported sighting and picking up two empty boats belonging to the sunken vessel. It was however some time before anything became known of the fate of those on board, among whom were a number of New Zealanders, both passengers and crew. Slowly the news trickled through in personal letters from occupied Europe and in welfare reports from the International Red Cross Committee. The Port Hobart had been sighted in the Caribbean Sea by the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, which immediately gave chase and fired a warning shell, forcing her to heave to. A boarding party from the Admiral Scheer then took off her complement and laid explosive charges inside her.

After some three months at sea, during which they were several times transferred from one ship to another, the captured passengers and crew were eventually landed on 1 March 1941 at Bordeaux, where they were placed in a transit camp at St. Médard en Jalles, known as Frontstalag 221. Conditions at this camp, which appears to have been a reception camp for personnel captured at sea, were described by a New Zealand member of the crew of the Port Hobart as ‘terrible’, and he speaks of a ‘lack of adequate food, clothing and sanitation.’ These impressions are corroborated by other men of similar status who came for the first time into contact with the watery soup and the crude sanitary facilities so well known later in many German prisoner-of-war camps. The living quarters consisted of rough wooden barracks, in each of which a hundred men slept, ate and passed their time. Each barrack contained a hundred bunks but four forms only and no tables. On the other hand, two New Zealand women passengers, who had had three months at sea under very difficult and trying conditions, were ‘well treated but had practically no clothing’.

The seven New Zealand women from the Port Hobart were accommodated in a refugee camp at Eysines, some three miles from St. Médard. Here they remained for three weeks under reasonable conditions, except for very poor food and sanitation.

The latter predicament resulted from the circumstances of their capture and from the lack of any replacements on the raiders. To enable them to remedy this discomfort and to buy a few extras, the United States Consul at Bordeaux had advanced sums of money to the civilian passengers and smaller sums to the merchant seamen. One of the worst aspects of treatment in St. Médard appears to have been the considerable delay before permission was given to write letters. There was an interval of several months before either first letters or International Red Cross ‘capture-cards’

By Article 36 of the 1929 Geneva Convention each prisoner was entitled within a week of his ‘arrival in camp’ to send a postcard to his relatives informing them of his capture and the state of his health. This postcard became known as the ‘capture-card’. In May 1940 the IRCC persuaded the German authorities to allow another ‘capture-card’ to be sent direct to their Central Agency at Geneva.

reached their destinations.

Two days after the attack in the Caribbean just described, two German raiders in the Pacific made their presence felt in waters uncomfortably close to New Zealand. In the early morning of 27 November 1940 the MV Rangitane, bound for England with (among other passengers) a number of recruits for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, was intercepted when only about four hundred miles from Auckland by the German surface raiders Orion and Komet. The Orion shelled and damaged her, took off her complement by launch, and then sank her by torpedoes and gunfire. Wounded brought on to the Orion received immediate medical treatment and the women were very well cared for. But the bulk of the prisoners, after a cursory interrogation, were housed below decks in rather dirty, overcrowded, and unbearably hot storerooms next to the engine-room. Accommodation on the Komet was even worse, and rations were of the poorest.

At the end of a week or so they all had the unpleasant experience for some days of being unwilling passengers on enemy vessels going into action. Captives in such a position are not only helpless in the face of physical danger, but they are torn between a patriotic desire for the enemy attack to miscarry and a hope that they themselves may escape injury. Just before Christmas 1940 the civilians and some of the servicemen from the Komet were relieved from further trials of this kind by being put ashore at Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago. A little later all those on the Orion were transferred to the German merchantman Ermland in the North Pacific. Leisurely cruising, with the majority of the captives in the hold, brought them round the Horn to the South Atlantic. Here overcrowding was aggravated by picking up a further 400 assorted prisoners from ships sunk by the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, though the prisoners were allowed on deck for a good many hours each day. They were then taken northwards to Bordeaux, where after a four months' voyage they joined the survivors from the Port Hobart and other ships at Frontstalag 221.

In early April, about a fortnight after their arrival there, the whole batch of ‘saved from the sea’ then at St. Médard were sent off to Germany. Civilian passengers and officers travelled in third-class carriages, but most of the others except the women

The British women, now nine in number, made this trip in a lorry.

had an uncomfortable five-day journey in cattle-trucks, followed by an 11-kilometre march which brought them, filthy and many of them none too fit, to the gates of the huge Stalag XB at Sandbostel, near Bremen. After a two-hours' wait in pouring rain they were allowed to pass through. Inside was a population of 25,000 prisoners of all nationalities housed in overcrowded, drab, ill-lit wooden barracks, laid out in long rows with ‘streets’ between. Food was as bad as it had been at Bordeaux, if not worse; clothing issued consisted of dirty garments previously worn by other prisoners. Sanitary conditions were bad and medical supplies poor. The newly-arrived servicemen were forced to work digging a rifle range, but received some compensation in the form of a slightly higher scale of rations. Their stay at Sandbostel was comparatively short, and by the middle of the year they had been sent to their appropriate permanent camps.

Most of the Air Force trainees went to Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf, passing through Dulag Luft for interrogation en route.

Members of the Merchant Navy, however, including several New Zealanders from a number of different merchantmen, were to remain in a separate ‘Navy’ compound until the middle of 1942.

Two members of the Merchant Marine escaped while on the way to Germany from Bordeaux on the night of 3 April. They jumped from the train as it was passing through a cutting at night. Being still in occupied France, they made their way south and crossed the border into Vichy territory. One of them, a New Zealander, Bernard Cooper, succeeded in getting free of the Marseilles police and reaching Spain. After 52 days in an unsavoury political prison and another 32 in a concentration camp, he made his way to Madrid and eventually to Gibraltar, reaching England in January 1942.

The civilians from St. Médard, including the women, were kept at Sandbostel for a short while before being sent off to internment camps. By that time several such camps for civilians had been established. For, although the Germans in the first months of war had allowed the repatriation to England of a good many British women from Germany and Poland,

1611 British and Commonwealth persons were repatriated before the frontiers were closed on 5–7 September 1939. A further 539 were repatriated between then and the end of February 1940.—IRCC Revue, April 1940, p. 304.

most of the men, married or single, had had to remain. Of the British women who stayed none had been interned up to March 1940, but most of the British Commonwealth male subjects (married or single) had been brought to Ilag XIII at Wülsburg

See page 8. The camp was originally called Stalag XIIIA and then Zweiglager (branch camp) XIIIA to distinguish it from a prisoner-of-war camp of the same number.

before the end of 1939.

Mention has already been made of this old converted convent enclosing a large park-like area, where prisoners of war had been housed in 1914–18. In its early days it had only 142 inmates (mainly British) in dormitories of twenty to thirty beds. The main worries of the inmates at first concerned lack of mail from their families or the financial position of their wives if still on German soil. But by June 1940 the invasion of the Low Countries and the Norwegian campaign had crowded the camp out with Belgians, Dutch and Norwegians, besides the original British, Egyptians and French—a total of 972 men. Three-tier bunks took the place of beds in the packed dormitories, which had always been used for eating as well as sleeping. In succeeding months the numbers increased and the camp became still worse: lack of proper sanitation, insufficient heating, insufficient water, no soap, and food, as a visitor put it, ‘just enough’. Life was difficult for the internees, and the control of such a heterogeneous mass of civilians under such conditions doubly so.

The German occupation of large areas of Western Europe in the spring and summer of 1940 had brought further numbers of British and Commonwealth civilians into enemy hands. The Low Countries being no longer neutral, the repatriation of civilians was much more difficult, quite apart from the German unwillingness to arrange further exchanges. While men of military age appear to have been interned almost immediately, British women in France, Holland, and Denmark seem to have gone on living for the first few months at their former addresses. Students, teachers, evangelists, nurses, wives—some of them remained uninterned for the rest of the war; others were interned about the end of the year either in France or Germany. For those at liberty, financial assistance up to £10 sterling a month was available through the United States consulates everywhere except in the Channel Islands. And these people were able to communicate with the outside world either by means of the 25-word messages that could be exchanged through the International Red Cross Committee, or by using a communications scheme operated for a time on their behalf by Thomas Cook and Son.

III: The First Battles in the Middle East

On 10 June 1940 as resistance in France was crumbling, Mussolini brought Italy into the war on the side of his Axis partner. Before the end of the year his forces had pushed across the Libyan border into Egypt as the thin British garrisons withdrew; and, using Albania as a base, they had made a bid for ascendancy in the Balkans by attacking Greece. By December not only had the Greeks unceremoniously pushed them back into Albania, but the British counter-attack was driving the desert army helter-skelter across Cyrenaica, with thousands of Italian troops pouring back into Egypt as prisoners. Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm units co-operated in these first battles of the Middle East, and some of their crew, including a few New Zealanders, had the misfortune to fall into enemy hands. Whether captured in Albania or Libya, whether officers or NCOs, these airmen found themselves sooner or later brought to Sulmona

About four hours' journey from Rome on the Pescara railway.

in Italy, at that time the only prisoner-of-war camp for British and French on the Italian mainland.

The camp itself was a few kilometres from the town of Sulmona in a beautiful valley up among the Abruzzi, near a village with the romantic name of Fonte d'Amore. The camp had been used for Austrian prisoners in 1917. Concrete barracks on a sloping terrain contained dormitories with twenty or so double-tiered bunks for other ranks, but for officers there were small rooms for two with tables and cupboards. There was a spacious sick-bay with an Italian medical officer in charge. Patients had hot showers once a week, and abundance of good food—for the officers the same as that for the Italian officers' mess. If an officer prisoner was short of clothes, the Unione Militare

Suppliers of clothing to the Italian forces.

would come and measure him for a uniform. There were armchairs in the officers' mess, and tablecloths and glassware; attached to the mess was a gymnasium and games room. Out of doors there were gardening facilities and Sunday walks up into the mountains. There was every courtesy from the Italians, who were clearly doing everything possible to make the monotony of what seemed to them the unnatural life of a prisoner-of-war camp more bearable.

At the time of the entry of Italy into the war very few New Zealand civilians were in that country, and none were interned. The difficulties that arose concerned the provision of means of subsistence for a student at Genoa and the New Zealand-born widow of an Italian at Rome. As happened in Germany, those deriving an income from New Zealand suddenly found themselves without funds. Great Britain had accepted responsibility for British-born widows of enemy subjects, and New Zealand followed this example on 19 June 1940 when she agreed that:

… the fund held by United States Government should be expended in same manner and on same conditions in respect destitute persons normally domiciled in New Zealand as is being done on behalf of H.M. Government in United Kingdom.

Cable from Prime Minister to New Zealand High Commissioner, London.

After the necessary arrangements for repayment had been made, money was thus made available through the Protecting Power.

Besides those who fell into the hands of enemy belligerent states there were a few, almost always airmen, who were forced while on military operations to land on the territory of a neutral country. Such men had under international law to be treated as military internees and so kept until the end of hostilities. One of our naval airmen operating over Norway in September 1940 had to make a forced landing in Sweden and was detained by the police for questioning, being billeted meanwhile in a hotel. His identity established, he was transported to an internment camp at Falun, 100 miles north-west of Stockholm. There he was well fed and generally well treated, his pay and any special wants being attended to by the British Legation in Stockholm.

In November and December of the same year during operations in the Mediterranean, two New Zealand RAF pilots were forced down on French North African territory.

At that time under the control of the neutral Vichy Government.

They were similarly interned at Aumale in Algeria for similar reasons, though their treatment was by no means so hospitable, and improvements were largely due to the efforts of the United States Consul in Algiers. The internees were strictly guarded, but one New Zealand NCO

F/Sgt C. Belcher.

was able to escape by way of the roof of the internment building and make his way (with native help) some distance west before being recaptured.

Prisoner-of-war losses in 2nd N.Z.E.F. (Middle East and Mediterranean) colour bar chart of prisoner of war losses

IV: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees

It will be seen from these glimpses of the life of our people in enemy and neutral countries, either as prisoners of war or internees or civilians at liberty, that the problem of watching over their interests had in 1940 suddenly become one of major importance. The rapid spread of the conflict and the increase in the numbers of those in enemy hands

By the end of the French campaign Germany had claimed over 3,000,000 prisoners, many more than she took in the whole of the First World War.

necessitated greater efforts on their behalf and made relief work for them much more complicated. Those external relief agencies whose initial efforts were outlined in the preceding chapter found their work suddenly increased out of all proportion. Not only had they to cope with this emergency, but they had to make long-term plans for relief in what was now recognised as a world war whose dimensions had already in some respects eclipsed those of its predecessor.

The United States of America continued to represent the interests of British Commonwealth countries in Germany: her representatives continued inspections of internment camps, making special inquiries on our behalf, and conveying to the German Foreign Office protests and other communications from the British Government. On Italy's entry into the war the United States became our Protecting Power in Italy as well. The increase in the number of camps to be visited and the enormous number of inquiries for information regarding individuals both interned and at liberty threw a heavy burden of work on the United States diplomatic and consular staffs.

It was perhaps as well, therefore, that their work to some extent overlapped that of the International Red Cross Committee. Both agencies carried out camp inspections, forwarded lists of prisoners, and generally tried to see that the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention was observed. Sometimes a United States consular official and an International Red Cross delegate would carry out a camp inspection together, though their impressions were of course conveyed in separate reports; and points that were perhaps missed by one visitor were noticed by the other. Apart from the improvements achieved on the spot, there seems little doubt that the right of inspection was one of the greatest safeguards of the welfare of the inmates of these camps. As the International Red Cross Committee saw it, ‘some infringements of the elementary laws of humanity are too grave for a state, even though it has little concern for the respect of such laws, to dare expose before the eyes of neutral witnesses’.

IRCC Report on Activities during the Second World War, Vol. I, p. 222.

A detaining power might sometimes indulge in considerable window-dressing before an inspection in order to favourably impress a visitor. But the effect of this was often counterbalanced by a discussion with the prisoners' representative. What is now known of certain camps where no neutral visitors were permitted is convincing evidence that inspection put an effective brake on any tendency toward neglect and ill-treatment.

The work of the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva which saw most rapid expansion in 1940 was that of the Central Agency for information. By July it had a staff of 1400 (1200 of them voluntary) and by August it was sometimes handling 50,000 letters a day. In addition to the transmitting of official lists of prisoners and internees between belligerents by photostat copies, the Central Agency had its own file for each individual. From this a card-index

By July 1940 alone there were 700,000 names indexed.

was kept up to date with the latest information so as to answer inquiries without delay. ‘Capture-cards’ were often sent to Geneva first and gave notification long before the official lists from Berlin were made up. Telegraphic communication of this news to London after June 1940 was often the first word received there, and in the case of Air Force personnel was averaging about fourteen days after capture. Inquiries were legion, sometimes as many as twenty-one for the same person, each inquiry often a letter of several pages. A large staff of linguists, retired officials, and teachers were taxed to their utmost simply to read and mark this flood of correspondence for those who wrote the replies. In addition there were the numerous letters destined for those interned, which had to be reduced to 25-word messages before being sent on.

The Committee itself did not have the financial resources to supply relief in kind to the mass of war victims resulting from the European blitzkreig of 1940. After the breakdown in communications in June 1940, it bought on behalf of the British Red Cross many tons of Swiss food to bridge the gap in supplies sent from England. But it concentrated mainly on collating requests from prisoners in the camps, sending these to their national Red Cross societies, and facilitating the despatch of whatever relief supplies the latter sent. The transport, storage, and distribution of the food, medicine, and clothing sent to British Commonwealth prisoners alone became an enormous task for its relief department. Besides the large-scale undertakings involved inside Switzerland, it necessitated the setting-up of offices in Lisbon and Marseilles which were in effect large shipping and forwarding agencies.

The Committee had from the first interested itself in spiritual and intellectual help for prisoners of war and civilian internees, and when numbers were small had taken upon itself to send books to the camps in Germany. In the spring of 1940 when this was no longer practicable, it began the co-ordination of this type of relief through various religious and lay organisations which had hitherto all been active on their own accounts. It presided over an ‘Advisory Committee on Reading Matter for Prisoners’, which centralised the activities of six such organisations

The organisations were: The World Alliance of YMCAs, the International Bureau of Education, the Ecumenical Commission for Assistance to Prisoners of War, the European Student Relief Fund, the International Federation of Library Associations, the Swiss Catholic Mission for Prisoners of War. The relief included the sending of school and university textbooks, periodicals, articles for use in religious services, artists' materials, games and sporting gear.

and to which the appropriate requests from camp leaders were passed on. Economic and censorship restrictions had made it a more difficult task than in 1914–18, and this centralisation of effort made the best use of available resources.

Besides these tasks the Committee, by virtue of its recognised neutral status and the expert knowledge it had accumulated through visits to camps and through correspondence with camp leaders, accomplished a great deal by negotiating with belligerents for reciprocal improvements in conditions. It played a leading part in fostering the agreement for setting up the Mixed Medical Commission

Article 69 of the 1929 Geneva Convention provides for the appointment of Mixed Medical Commissions of three members (two neutral and one appointed by the detaining power) to examine sick and wounded with a view to their repatriation.

in Germany, which in June 1940 began examining sick and wounded with a view to the repatriation of those incapable of again taking up arms. It negotiated too in such matters as free postage for the mail of civilian internees, exchange of correspondence between prisoners, and the fixing of pay and upkeep allowances in prisoner-of-war camps. These many and varied war activities placed a heavy strain on the modest financial resources of the Committee and necessitated an appeal to governments and national Red Cross societies.

The New Zealand National Patriotic Fund sent a first contribution of £500 in December 1940. From 1 September 1939 to 31 December 1946 the IRCC spent 55 million Swiss francs on war work, of which governments and other agencies contributed 27 million; a special Relief Department for dealing with relief supplies cost 15 million, all raised by national contributions.

Although the Committee had to resort to a voluntary collection in Switzerland to balance its 1940 budget, the appeal met with a progressively increasing response as the war went on and as the indispensable nature of its relief work for those in enemy countries came to be realised.

In England the prisoner-of-war branch of the War Office also expanded considerably during this period, becoming the Directorate of Prisoners of War. The Inter-departmental Committee

See p. 10.

on prisoners of war and civilian internees met regularly. It was concerned primarily with financial matters such as fixing the rates of exchange for prisoner-of-war pay in enemy countries,

The rates agreed on finally with enemy governments were: Germany15 RM = £1Italy72 lire = £1

and limiting the use of British currency on goods sent to prisoner-of-war camps. Nevertheless the more pressing general problems relating to prisoners of war in Germany—such as the supply of relief food—came in for full discussion; and general policy had often to be thrashed out before financial detail could be settled. Moreover, as the Committee dealt also with problems relating to the custody of enemy prisoners, of whom some were being accommodated in Canada by January 1941 and others were likely to be transferred to Australia, South Africa and India, Commonwealth governments became involved in its work. The necessity for some central body to lay down general policy on all prisoner-of-war matters

A similar body for civilians was not set up until 1944, though Dominion governments were consulted when necessary.

concerning the British Commonwealth gradually came to be recognised; and early in 1941 an inter-governmental committee was set up under the chairmanship of the financial secretary to the War Office. Two sub-committees were to attend to detail:

Sub-Committee A, to deal with general questions,

Sub-Committee B, to deal with financial questions, thereby superseding the Inter-departmental Committee.

The ‘United Kingdom Departments of State concerned’ were, however, to be represented on the inter-governmental committee.—Army Council memorandum of 23 June 1941.

Commonwealth governments were to be represented on the new main committee and Sub-Committee A.

By July 1941 they had representatives on Sub-Committee B as well.

Through the High Commissioner's Office and the service liaison offices in London, the New Zealand Government was kept in touch with any arrangements being made on behalf of British Commonwealth prisoners and internees. The information was passed on to relatives and others interested in New Zealand by the service branches concerned, or by the Department of Internal Affairs in the case of inquiries relating to civilians.

V: Work of Relief Organisations

Throughout the period under review the British Red Cross was still almost alone in supplying and organising the sending of relief in kind to Commonwealth prisoners of war and internees. The increase in numbers resulting from the land operations of 1940 had a profound effect on its work. It involved a huge expansion of output, necessitating the training of new staff and the establishment of new packing centres at a time when the bombing of Britain began seriously to affect the whole life of the country.

With thousands now to cater for instead of hundreds, it was essential that the best use should be made of the funds and the forwarding space available. As a first step, further attention was devoted to determining the optimum content of food parcels from all points of view. Nutrition, packing space, keeping quality, the lack of cooking facilities in camps, and the satisfaction of requests from camp leaders were all taken into account. This work became the responsibility of a special committee, comprising not only representatives of the relevant departments of the British Red Cross but also dietetic advisers from the War Office and the Ministry of Food. Average diets were worked out from the camp ration scales and menus reported by the Protecting Power and International Red Cross Committee representatives. Food parcels were then planned, which when added to the camp rations would produce a satisfactory diet in calories, vitamins, and other essential food constituents.

Rationing and cost too began to play a part for the first time. As time went on it was found that the amount of food sent could be reduced. After some experiment it was cut down in August 1940 to one 11-pound parcel each week, which remained standard for the rest of the war. The value of ten shillings a parcel

This cost included food, soap, cigarettes and tobacco, packing materials and freight.

fixed in early 1940 was not however reduced, as it was felt that anything lower would not give sufficient nutritive value; and even rising costs in the later war years were not allowed to interfere with this. In October 1940 the British Board of Customs and Excise allowed dutiable goods for prisoner-of-war parcels to be purchased duty free, thus helping to offset the increasing prices. In January 1941 the Canadian Red Cross began shipping small quantities of its own food parcels direct to the distribution route. This was the beginning of a form of Commonwealth aid which was to greatly relieve the strain on Britain's home food resources. To cater for the many sick and wounded, quantities of invalid food to supplement their diet, together with medical and surgical supplies, were sent to Geneva and to camp infirmaries and hospitals.

The increased numbers confirmed the impracticability of addressing food parcels to individuals. With the notification machinery on both sides in its formative stage, it took considerable time for all names of prisoners and their locations to come through; and the sorting-out process in Germany made camp addresses quickly out of date. There resulted a great deal of inequality of distribution, which with a primary necessity like food was the cause of much ill-feeling, for not all camps had adopted the principle of pooling.

For similar reasons a ban had been placed on the sending of food by private individuals.

In August 1940 the practice was begun of consigning food parcels in bulk to the International Red Cross Committee which, by keeping in close touch with the present and probable future situation at camps, could ensure a prompt and adequate distribution.

Clothing had now become a serious problem. Early in 1940 the matter of clothing for prisoners had been under consideration by service departments, for the German supply under Article 12

See p. 26, note 1.

of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention had been found inadequate if the prisoner was to maintain his morale and self-respect. An attempt had been made to negotiate an agreement by which the prisoner's country of origin would supply his uniform, as it was felt that the supplying of large numbers of prisoners with appropriate uniforms might prove embarrassing to both sides. In the meantime service departments had begun to supply uniforms for other rank prisoners to the British Red Cross for onward transmission, officer prisoners having to pay for their own. Faced now with catering for an additional forty-odd thousand, the War Office supplied this number of greatcoats and battle dress in bulk;

At a cost of £206,000.

and these were despatched by the British Red Cross before the end of the year, together with smaller quantities of clothing for sailors and airmen. In addition the British Red Cross supplied and sent 24,000 sets of underclothing and other articles similar to the contents of an ‘initial parcel.’

See Chapter 1. The cost was £85,000.

This emergency coped with, it was obvious that the British Red Cross could not continue to finance such a project. After inter-departmental conferences early in 1941, it was decided that it should be responsible only for the provision of socks and toilet articles; uniform, underclothing, and blankets were to become the responsibility of the service departments.

A supply of uniforms alone for two years for 50,000 was budgeted at £692,007.

The examination, repacking, and despatch of ‘personal’ parcels from next-of-kin also began to develop into a task of alarming size; but after inter-departmental discussion it was felt that this could still be most economically undertaken by the British Red Cross. Accordingly a special Next-of-kin Section was set up at St. James's Palace to maintain card-indexes for all prisoners and next-of-kin, and to send the latter the necessary instructions, labels, and documents. At the same time a Next-of-kin Parcels Centre was established at Finsbury Circus to examine and re-pack all the parcels sent in. By the end of December a highly efficient organisation had been evolved with a staff of 65, and some 41,000 parcels had been dealt with and sent off.

The problem of finding someone to act as next-of-kin in the United Kingdom for the sending of parcels to Dominion prisoners was solved in New Zealand's case by giving the task to Mr. C. B. Burdekin, OBE, of the High Commissioner's Office in London. The arrangement was to supply regular parcels for those without next-of-kin in the United Kingdom, and to make up the weight in any parcel sent in by next-of-kin or friends which was short of the maximum allowed. Any articles so provided were purchased by the New Zealand War Services Association,

Formed in London in November 1939. This Association, the Joint Council, the National Patriotic Fund Board, and the High Commissioner's Office co-operated in all matters relating to relief for New Zealand prisoners of war and interned civilians.

reimbursed by the National Patriotic Fund, and the New Zealand Joint Council's representative in London was consulted when necessary on matters of policy. The parcels were packed at the New Zealand Forces Club in Charing Cross Road, and on 7 December 1940 the first parcel was despatched.

In August, too, there was established the ‘permit’ system by which anyone could send cigarettes and tobacco through an English firm which held the required government permit to export in this way. Many New Zealanders were thus able to receive parcels from friends or relatives in the United Kingdom. The British Red Cross as a permit holder continued to send also on its own account cigarettes and tobacco in bulk, and no longer included them in food parcels. As from March 1941 cigarettes and tobacco were also sent each month by the New Zealand War Services Association through a London firm, with whom the arrangements were made by the High Commissioner's Office. In a similar way members of the public could now send books, music, games, cards, and sports equipment. And in the late autumn of 1940, after the more urgent matters of food, clothing, and invalid comforts were well in hand, a new Fiction and Games Section

Called at first the Indoor Recreations Section.

of the British Red Cross made itself responsible for regular consignments of lighter books and material for indoor recreation.

The New Zealand Joint Council reimbursed the British Red Cross for this service from the National Patriotic Fund at the rate of 5s. a year for each New Zealand prisoner of war.

It began the task of selecting and despatching books for building up camp libraries to satisfy all tastes.

The despatch from England of educational books and correspondence courses for prisoners of war had been postponed. The former, it was felt, might prejudice the despatch of urgently needed food parcels. The latter might restrict correspondence with relatives and might impose a strain on British censorship if German and Italian prisoners were granted similar privileges. By the end of the year, however, the Educational Books Section of the British Red Cross was reorganised and transferred to the New Bodleian Library at Oxford, to cater for the large response to the questionnaire regarding study sent to camps early in 1940 and for the needs of the thousands of new prisoners. It aimed at enabling the prisoner of war to spend the enforced leisure of captivity in fitting himself by study for peacetime work after his release. Besides satisfying individual requests for books and courses, it helped the organisation of educational facilities in the camps and made arrangements for prisoners to sit examinations there which would further qualify them in their chosen vocations. Under the chairmanship of the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, the section's advisory committee in 1941 persuaded more and more educational bodies and professional institutions to provide study facilities and to recognise examinations held in prisoner-of-war camps.

The invasion of Belgium by the Germans in May 1940 caused the abandonment of the Ostend-overland route for relief consignments and the establishment of a new one to French ports, overland through France to Switzerland, and so on to Germany. A month later the collapse of France put an end to this too, and considering the uncertainty then prevailing in England regarding the future of the war it is not surprising that for a month and a half no despatches were sent off by the General Post Office. By 24 July the best that could be arranged for bulk consignments was a complicated route to Lisbon, through Portugal, Spain, Vichy France, to the International Red Cross Committee in Switzerland, and so to camps.

The gap in supplies thus created was partly met by purchase of bulk food in Switzerland and Balkan neutrals. But this was not before there had been a period of acute shortage of food in camps, resulting in much concern among next-of-kin and demands for the right to send personal parcels of food.

Gift parcels from friends and relatives were able to avoid the most difficult stage of this route, as they could simply be sent through any neutral country.

It was soon realised that, owing to the time now taken and the interruptions in transit, needs would have to be estimated if possible some time in advance; and to secure smooth delivery, reserves would have to be built up at nodal points all along the route. For, although between 500,000 and 600,000 parcels were shipped by the end of the year, the many rail changes and the slowness of the new route prevented sufficient deliveries to camps and caused a vast accumulation at Lisbon. A British Red Cross official was sent there to investigate and succeeded in chartering a Portuguese vessel to go to Marseilles, whence the International Red Cross Committee guaranteed transport to Geneva. With the consent of the British postal authorities, a relief shipment sailed on 22 December. This temporary expedient to relieve the bottleneck at Lisbon was soon recognised as the only practical route. Four more ships sailed in January 1941 and by April Lisbon was clear of parcels, with three ships on a regular run to maintain the flow.

In fact there was established a steamship service under a neutral flag between Lisbon and Marseilles. The crews were neutral and the ships bore the Red Cross emblem and carried an IRCC convoy agent. The ships were chartered by the national Red Cross societies and running costs were apportioned.

By mid-1941 camps in Germany were getting regular and adequate supplies.

There was at this stage little point in attempting to organise relief in New Zealand when the necessary machinery was already so well established in England. The Joint Council kept in touch with its British counterpart, passing on such information as might help next-of-kin and friends in communicating with a prisoner or in sending gifts to him.

The Joint Council, besides being in direct postal communication with the British Red Cross, had a liaison officer in London, Colonel B. Myers, CMG.

By an arrangement made with the British Red Cross in May 1940, the National Patriotic Fund was to meet the cost of the food and clothing sent to New Zealanders.

At that stage the annual cost for one prisoner of war was: Food£41 12s.Clothing£7

In May, too, the Joint Council launched an appeal for funds in New Zealand which in just over a month realised more than £500,000, some of which was immediately donated to the British Red Cross in recognition of the work it was doing.

£10,000 was paid in June to the Lord Mayor of London's appeal for the British Red Cross.

VI: Germans and Italians interned in New Zealand

Reference has already been made to the New Zealand Government's decision to intern a number of Germans and Austrians whom it was thought unwise either to leave at liberty or to repatriate. The entry of Italy into the war entailed further security measures, this time involving Italians living in New Zealand, some of whom it seemed desirable to intern. In June 1940, partly to allay public uneasiness, special alien tribunals were set up, on the pattern of those in the United Kingdom, to examine police evidence concerning aliens and to decide what precautionary action should be taken in each case. The small Italian communities scattered throughout New Zealand, most of them engaged in fishing or farming, were found to contain a number of Fascist Party members. A branch of the party had been set up in New Zealand in 1927 and had been fostered by the Italian consulate. By 1941 it had been found necessary to detain on Somes Island some 86 men, of ages ranging from 22 to 63 years, and grouped broadly as 58 Germans or Aus- trians, 25 Italians, a Norwegian, a Pole, and a Russian.

Of the Germans twelve were naturalised and two were ‘Germans but not identified as such’; of the Austrians one was naturalised; of the Italians eight were naturalised.

No women or children were ever interned.

Two German women were held at Point Halswell in Wellington for a short period in 1940, but were released and repatriated through Japan.

It has been shown that from the first the authorities in New Zealand were resolved to be above any possible reproach in their treatment of enemy nationals; and it is clear that every effort was made subsequently to minimise the discomforts of those interned. The originally high standard of the internment camp diet was more than maintained, and we hear from an International Red Cross visitor that ‘Italians make as much as 75% of their own meals. They make spaghetti with eggs and flour, go fishing and smoke their fish in a special shack put up on the beach.’ To guard against undernourishment each internee was given half a pint of fresh milk a day, exclusive of that used in cooking.

Camp routine appears not to have been too hard to bear. Four hours were set aside each morning for camp duties: cleaning out rooms, airing bedding, and cultivating vegetable gardens. This done, the internees were free to apportion their time as they wished. For their convenience there were dining rooms and rest-rooms where continuous fires burned; a piano in the guard hut could be used whenever desired; tennis and bowls were available, and for winter use there was a long hut with facilities for deck tennis, table tennis, quoits, and other indoor games; and each barrack had a small library of fifty novels, in addition to the main camp library. Two-thirds of a long hut was set aside for ‘manual work’, where the Italians in particular ‘do excellent work with shells, make plaster statuettes, wooden toys, models of ships and pretty inlaid tables.’

Report of the IRCC delegate. This work was not allowed to be sold, nor were any arrangements made for the internees to do paid work. On the other hand, all their creature comforts were amply provided for, and many of the internees had independent means, amounting in some cases to £4 or £5 a week.

The remainder of this hut housed the school, where languages and other subjects were studied, books being supplied by Victoria University College, the National Library Service, and the Protecting Power for German interests. In addition there was a general workshop hut, with barber, watchmaker, and the main library. The clothing provided seems to have given no cause for complaint.

The clothing provided included for each man: woollen pullover, woollen underpants, woollen vests, flannel pyjamas, military boots (2 pairs), serge suit. To quote the IRCC report, ‘All these articles are of good quality, especially the suits.’

The canteen sold tobacco, cigars and cigarettes, chocolate, condensed milk, biscuits, wine, beer, and soap, at prices from five to ten per cent lower than the retail price in Wellington. One bottle of beer a day and one bottle of wine a week was the allow- ance. The visiting International Red Cross delegate was hardly exaggerating when he summed up conditions by saying that ‘the treatment generally’ was ‘excellent’. It was indeed a far cry from the lack of adequate food and clothing, the overcrowding, and the general squalor of the camps at Bordeaux, Sandbostel, and Wülsburg during the same period.

For a description of St. Médard, Bordeaux, see pp. 35–6; for Stalag XB, Sandbostel, p. 37; for Ilag XIII, Wülsburg, pp. 8 and 38.

* * * * *

The events of the war referred to at the beginning of this chapter had made Germany the master of the western continental Europe, with Britain left struggling to preserve the integrity of her shores. In the exultation of victory many Germans thought the defeat of Britain only a matter of time—and not a very long time at that. Such a situation might well breed arrogance towards the prisoners of enemy countries already defeated or about to be so, and an inclination to disregard treaty obligations in respect of them.

In May 1940, before the French collapse, an International Red Cross delegate was able to say:

A great effort is being made everywhere in Germany to lodge the hundreds of thousands of prisoners…. The authorities show a fine spirit of understanding….

The fact that comfortless old fortresses and tents were sometimes used for accommodation, that food was ‘just sufficient’, and that there were always delays in arranging for mail might perhaps be excused in an undertaking of the size necessary to cope with the huge influx of prisoners. But in the months that followed the capitulation of France, there is a good deal of evidence of uncompromising refusal by German camp guards to be in any way restricted in their conduct towards the enemy soldiers who were in their power. There were reprisals for refusal by other ranks to work overtime—withholding of mail and standing to attention for hours on end; there were transfers of prisoners' representatives for ‘inciting complaints’; there were long delays before officer prisoners received their pay and other ranks their working wages; there was high-handed action regarding the disposal and distribution of relief supplies sent to camp leaders. As the year drew on, with Britain not only holding out but hitting back, many of the earlier abuses were corrected. The right of prisoners to lay complaints with inspecting officials was grudgingly conceded; the ever-growing stream of British mail and relief supplies was allowed to enter more freely; and in general the traditional German attitude of being korrekt in the observance of paper agreements reasserted itself, perhaps because the permanent rank and file of German officialdom was temporarily saved from that complete dictation by the Nazi Party which a final victory might have imposed.

Against the oppressive weight of German restrictions and the harshness resulting from a tendency on the part of some German guards to exploit to the utmost their power as captors, the British prisoner in time found weapons. There was his own native stubbornness which left him unmoved after torrents of screaming abuse; there was his sense of humour which made him laugh at his misfortunes and brought the sting of ridicule to the enemy's raw spots; there was the cheering news of the Battle of Britain brought in by newly-captured prisoners; there were the gifts of food, clothing, and other comforts which restored his physical energy and gave him a sense of pride in belonging to the country which had sent them; there was the organisation of escapes and anti-propaganda measures which made him feel he was carrying on the fight in some small way. On their side, governments and relief agencies immediately shouldered the burden of supplying him with the extra food and clothing necessary to keep him in health and good heart, until such time as he would be again free to make his contribution to the nation's economy. And lastly, his next-of-kin were at pains to follow the special postal regulations for sending the letters and parcels from home which would bring him the best mental comfort of all.

The beauty of the Italian scene and the volatile lightheartedness of many of its people brightened the first months for prisoners in Italy. Moreover, the Italians were eager to show their civilised attitude towards their fellow-beings, even though prisoners—perhaps especially to the British. In those days of few prisoners it was no great strain on their economy to treat British officers much as they did their own, and to reduce considerably for British other ranks the wide gap that existed between the traditional standards of living of their own officers and other ranks. Then, too, the surrender of their armies in East Africa and the later British successes in Cyrenaica placed a mass of Italians in British hands which far exceeded the number of prisoners they had any prospect of taking. Whatever the value of international conventions, treatment of prisoners tends to be reciprocal; and the nation with a preponderance in numbers captured is placed in a favourable bargaining position. Whether or not such considerations had any restraining influence on the Fascist Government, it seems that many Italians were only too willing to show friendliness to their British ‘guests’. Many next-of-kin in New Zealand felt happier when they heard that their sons or husbands were prisoners of the Italians and not in German hands; and it is clear that in the early stage at least their attitude was justified.

CHAPTER 3 The Campaigns of Greece and Crete (April – October 1941)

I: The Greek Campaign and Prisoners in Greece

EARLY in 1941 it was decided to send a British Commonwealth force to help Greece against German invasion from the north. This decision was to involve the 2nd New Zealand Division in a major fighting role for the first time. The experience was to be a short one. The first New Zealanders of the Greek expedition arrived in Piraeus Harbour on 7 March; on 28 April the last of them to take part in the planned evacuation were taken off by sea. In the three weeks that followed its first actions the Division was engaged in a rapid succession of defensive and rearguard actions, delaying the enemy advance and covering its own withdrawal southward. At Mount Olympus, Servia and Platamon, at Tempe and Elasson, at Thermopylae, at Thebes, at Corinth and on the Peloponnese, and almost up to the evacuation beaches themselves, units of the Division were engaged in holding advanced forces of the enemy in check.

A military withdrawal is difficult to accomplish without numbers of troops being left wounded or cut off, especially if the withdrawal has to be carried out rapidly. In a retreat through Greece of some 300 miles in the space of three weeks, over difficult terrain and harassed by the enemy air force, it is perhaps surprising that the numbers left behind were not higher. Besides those captured in action, a few wounded in each engagement missed being brought out, and those cut off in the north had to try and improvise some means of getting away. A number of stragglers did not reach the evacuation areas in time to be taken off, and at some places the evacuation machinery broke down. Of the New Zealanders who remained behind, 1856 fell into German hands as prisoners of war.

By far the greatest number of these were captured near Kalamata,

The total number captured there according to a German estimate was about 7000. The number of New Zealanders taken was approximately 800.

in the southern Peloponnese, where a large number of British Commonwealth reinforcements and base troops from Voula (near Athens) had been moved ready for evacuation. Some 10,000 men had collected under cover around the port of Kalamata by 27 April and their evacuation was planned for the 29th. In the early evening of that day German forces, having penetrated the approaches to the area, were able to take possession of the town and seafront. Somehow a counter-attack was organised, and in a brief action marked by one or two feats of great individual gallantry

For his part in this action Sgt J. D. Hinton (20 Bn) won the VC.

our forces cleared the town of the invaders, inflicted considerable casualties on the enemy, and took some prisoners. When the warships arrived for the evacuation, however, they had time to take on board only a few hundred before withdrawing in accordance with newly-received orders. Ammunition was at a low ebb and many of the troops were unarmed; the Germans were reinforcing ready to renew their attack, and a conference of the senior officers therefore decided to cease further resistance in the early hours of the following morning. This left but little darkness for anyone to escape to the hills through the surrounding German posts. A few succeeded in getting clean away; a number of others stayed in the neighbourhood only to be rounded up in the next few days; most were too tired or bewildered to realise that this was the best opportunity they would have to escape.

When the German forces re-entered the area, their prisoners were liberated and their former captors marched to a holding area in a field on the outskirts of the town. The Germans are reported as having been ‘courteous and fair’, though lack of shelter made the holding paddock unbearably hot during the day and water supply proved a problem. Their medical officers assisted our own to establish in the town hall an emergency dressing station for the 250-odd British wounded.

Maj G. H. Thomson, NZMC, states: ‘I was put in the care of the Medical Officer with the German column…. he was an excellent man as was their Commandant and they both helped me to the utmost of their capacity during the following three weeks…. I have no comment of an adverse nature to make regarding our treatment by the combatant troops at Kalamata.’ They were later transported to Kokkinia hospital, arriving on 16 May.

Within two days all prisoners except these were entrained for Corinth, which had become the prisoner-of-war collecting centre for southern Greece.

In the early stages of the evacuation from Greece about 500 New Zealand sick and wounded, with five medical officers of 1 NZ General Hospital and 40 orderlies, had been moved from a walking-wounded hospital established at Voula to an olive grove on the westerly side of Megara. Their numbers were swollen by the addition of the New Zealand Mobile Dental Unit, the YMCA, Pay Unit, Postal Unit, and various reinforcements from our base at Voula. Some were evacuated on the night of 25–26 April, but the beachmaster at Megara ordered the remainder to proceed to the Peloponnese for evacuation from one of the southern ports. Ambulances sent ahead with patients unable to walk became caught up in the attack on the Corinth bridge by German parachutists, as did the walking wounded following them; and the rest of the party fell into German hands a little later. A good many other New Zealanders were picked up near the evacuation beaches, on islands to which they had made their way, and even on the caiques

Greek fishing vessel with sail and usually auxiliary engine.

and launches by which they were preparing to continue their journeys. The action at the Corinth Canal which followed the landing of the German parachutists accounted for further captures, many of them wounded.

For all these prisoners in southern Greece the German evacuation plan was the same: to the collection centre at Corinth, thence to Salonika en route for Austria and Germany. Those captured in the north—at Thermopylae or south of Tempe, for example—would go direct to Salonika, passing sometimes through staging camps at Lamia and Larissa. While awaiting transport to a collection centre they might be held in a field, an empty cottage, a schoolhouse or a cemetery. The Germans put many prisoners immediately to work, and men found themselves in a variety of places ranging from a slaughterhouse or a stables to a German quartermaster's store. There does not seem to have been much looting from prisoners—a practice frowned upon by the German officers, though their troops could offer to buy a prisoner's possessions and often paid a good price. Such interrogation as was done was very perfunctory. No effort was made to insist on answers that were not forthcoming, and sometimes the whole matter was disposed of in friendly conversation amid an atmosphere of the greatest good humour. A victorious army sweeping all before it had perhaps no time to niggle over detail and could afford to be magnanimous. But the interrogations later in the year of captured escapers and evaders, to discover who had helped them and where they had been hiding, were severe and intensive.

The help given by the German medical corps at Kalamata in looking after our wounded was no isolated instance. Reports show that treatment by German medical officers was good and that their conduct generally was correct and humane. It is true that some of our wounded might have had to wait in improvised lock-ups for a day or so with their original field dressings before evacuation, and that there were sometimes delays (at the peak period for casualties) while German wounded were treated first. But in general it seems that serious cases were evacuated as soon as possible to Greek hospitals, where our own medical officers were given facilities to treat them. At Corinth they were taken first to an emergency Greek hospital in a converted schoolhouse; but on 27 April the New Zealand medical officers from Megara were allowed to set up a temporary British hospital in two of the city's hotels, largely as a result of the efforts of a Greek Red Cross worker.

Miss Ariadne Massautti commandeered the hotels, persuaded the Germans to allow the transfer there of captured medical personnel, organised the Greek Red Cross sisters and VADs to work there, arranged for supplies of all kinds, and generally set an example of cheerfulness and energy. She was awarded the George Medal for her efforts.

After a fortnight there all patients and staff were moved by ambulance to Piraeus, where the remnants of 5 Australian General Hospital were receiving all British wounded and sick. They had been moved by the Germans to an imposing four-storied, five-block, white stone building standing bathed in sunshine on an area of open wasteland at the foot of the hills behind Piraeus Harbour, and about half a mile above the cluster of houses that made up Nea Kokkinia village. Here British, Australian, and New Zealand medical officers and orderlies were coping with 500-odd cases brought in from emergency dressing stations, using the fairly complete facilities of the Australians and what the Greek Red Cross could supply. Many of our prisoners of war owe limb and life to the operations performed in Kokkinia hospital and to the medical care which followed. To keep enough beds clear for new patients, a walking-wounded and convalescent camp was established in some old Greek barracks below the hospital on the outskirts of Nea Kokkinia.

At the beginning of June, when the influx of wounded from Crete began to arrive by plane, some of the staff were allowed to organise another emergency hospital in the heart of Athens. They were given the large Polytechnic School building with space for 700 beds, and adequate medical facilities appear to have been set up in a very short time. The Germans seem to have left us a fairly free hand at both hospitals. But in both, in spite of help from the Greeks and Red Cross funds, the shortage of food proved a very great difficulty and, especially in dysentery cases, the patients' greatest hurdle to recovery.

Meanwhile the transit camp at Corinth had become filled to overflowing with captured Allied troops, mixed with some 4000 Italians (former prisoners of the Greeks), whom the Germans decided should remain under guard. By 6 May nearly 8000 Australians, British, Cypriots, New Zealanders (1000) and Palestinians, some 350 of them officers, were packed into a sandy area of about 15 acres near the aerodrome on the outskirts of the city.

There were also 1100 Yugoslavs. Dr. Brunel, the IRCC delegate, gives the total in the camp (excluding Italians) as 12,000.

Inside the camp perimeter were some old, verminous, Greek stone barracks and wooden sheds with inadequate ventilation. There was no bed except the cold stone floor, and no blankets beyond what men had brought with them or could in some way lay hands on. A quart of water from one of two primitive wells was the daily allowance for drinking and washing. A huge open-trench latrine over 200 yards long was the only concession to sanitation, and with heat and flies completing a vicious circle, the spread of dysentery was rapid. The camp guards were frequently changed as German units were moved: paratroops, followed by Austrians, then young SS troops, and finally older men unfit for front-line service, who proved to be the most reasonable. There was at times some rough work with rifle butts and a good deal of unnecessary shooting, with resultant casualties in the compound.

Senior officers had a constant struggle to wring something approaching adequate rations from successive German commandants, some at least outwardly courteous but none very concerned about the welfare of a large mob of prisoners. Dried or salt fish, lentils or rice, a little oil, and a hard army biscuit

About 5 ins by 5 ins and about half an inch thick, very like some of our dog biscuits in appearance and flavour.

or one-ninth of a loaf of bread, with a very little sugar or honey, were a typical day's rations, the whole estimated at about 800 calories. But it was possible to supplement this to a limited extent. Gifts from the Greek Red Cross

Besides its own resources, the Greek Red Cross was being supplied with funds by the International Red Cross Committee to expend for British Commonwealth prisoners of war.

of whole sheep and other foods helped to thicken the camp soups. A Greek market allowed to operate inside the camp supplied those who still possessed drachmae. Other ranks sent out on working parties, to the Piraeus aerodrome for example, did not want for whatever the generous Greek population could make available to them, and some of these were able to help out their less fortunate officers. Nevertheless, after a week or two many within the camp began to have the ‘black-outs’

Feeling of faintness (actual fainting in extreme cases) on suddenly standing up or other sudden bodily action; attributed by medical officers in prison camps to lack of sufficient nourishment, and also sometimes to prolonged inactivity.

which were to become a common experience in prisoner-of-war camps short of food; and men acquired the habit of hanging about the camp perimeter in the hope that a friendly Greek might throw them something to eat.

Food soon became a main topic of conversation—the beginning of a preoccupation with diet which was later in Germany to become for many prisoners of war an obsession. Material conditions being thoroughly wretched, men sought escape from their environment not only in memories of good food but also in recalling what they were doing in New Zealand a year back, and perhaps the soldier who dreamt one night he was returning to New Zealand on a luxury liner was typical. Escapism took another form when there began to circulate those wild prison-camp rumours, ranging at this stage from the entry of the United States into the war to a promise by Mr. Churchill to have all prisoners released within seven days. Captured chaplains and YMCA secretaries co-operated in organising open-air church services and evening concerts, and for a time a kind of revivalist enthusiasm seems to have swept the camp. Men's pent-up emotions found relief in the mass singing of the popular tune ‘There’ll Always be an England', when the National Anthem had been banned by the German camp authorities.

The coming and going of Greek vendors in and out of the camp in the first weeks gave many of the Palestinians and Cypriots an easy opportunity to get away, and other prisoners were also able to make a break before German security was tightened up. One New Zealander

Tpr A. Connelly (Div Cav), mentioned in despatches.

made his way to Salonika, travelling at times under the coaches of troop trains. He spent a week and a half in Salonika, alternately sheltering with Greek families and spending the night in the streets, as the Germans had announced that Greeks helping British troops would be shot. After hiding for a while in a village some 30 miles to the north, he made his way with the aid of Greek police and civilians to the Agion Oros (Mount Athos) peninsula.

Agion Oros (Holy Mountain) is the name given to the Athos Peninsula which contains many Greek Orthodox monasteries. The most easterly of the three south-pointing fingers of northern Greece, it was used by many escapers as an embarkation point in attempts to reach Turkey by boat.

Here he was helped with a boat which took him to the island of Imbros, where a party of escapers had collected. Another boat took the party on to Turkey, whence the Turkish authorities returned them to Allied hands over the borders of Syria. It is difficult to say how many prisoners broke out from the Corinth transit camp, as there is no official record of many who temporarily regained their liberty but were recaptured. But this account may be taken as typical of the experiences of some thousands of Allied troops at that time at liberty in Greece.

During the first fortnight of May Dr. Brunel, the International Red Cross delegate, was able to visit the camp three times, bringing quantities of medicines and toilet articles. The rations began to improve in both quantity and quality, and more Red Cross food began to make its way into the camp. Prisoners were allowed to go bathing in parties in the Gulf of Corinth, a concession which made the problem of personal cleanliness much easier to solve. Even so a medical inspection in early June found 20 per cent of the camp infested with lice. The Germans allowed each prisoner to send off a first capture-card and several letters. However, the improvement in conditions received a setback towards the end of May. There had been much speculation in the camp from 20 May onwards concerning a noticeable increase in air activity, particularly on the large numbers of troop-carriers passing overhead. This speculation was set at rest about a week later, when some naval prisoners from Crete began to arrive, and when the German commandant closed the camp market, cut down the rations, and generally toughened up discipline as a reprisal for alleged ill-treatment of German parachutists on Crete by the British. Two days later the charge was admitted to be baseless. On 3 June considerable numbers of prisoners started to arrive from Crete, and a day or so later prisoners began to move from Corinth to swell the stream of captured Allied humanity now flowing north through Salonika and Yugoslavia to prisoner-of-war camps in Austria, Germany, and Poland.

Greece and Crete: Escape Routes and Routes of Evacuation by Enemy Colour map diagram of Greece and Crete

In the early hours of 5 June the first party of some hundreds, including most of the officers, marched the eight miles to connect with the train on the other side of the Corinth Canal. After some weeks of comparative inactivity and poor food, many found such a march, carrying all their belongings, a strenuous one. But the 25-mile trek which followed the train journey to Gravia (near Levadhia), over the hot, dusty shingle of the 4000-foot Brallos Pass, left everyone exhausted. They had been warned beforehand that any man falling out would have to discard all his gear, an order which made them angry and determined. No one fell out on this party, though two of a later party died on the road. A few had the daring to break from the dusty line of march, ducking into the scrub by the roadside, and the good luck to remain undiscovered, until nightfall enabled them to get clean away. Near Lamia, on the other side of the pass, the prisoners were packed into cattle-trucks and carried north to Salonika,

There was one other break in the line of a mile or so near Platamon.

where they were marched through the crowded streets to the prison barracks. They were spared more than a day or so in this place, and then, again pushed into cattle-trucks, they began their long journey north to Germany.

Subsequent parties had very similar experiences, except that many were able to get food and drink from friendly Greeks who were waiting along the route, at great risk to themselves from some of the German guards. Many of the later parties stayed some time in Salonika transit camp.

In the week that followed, the exodus from Corinth continued, and the evacuation was reported to be complete by 11 June. Some parties went through to Germany almost immediately, but numbers of men had to remain at Salonika to work for the Germans and to endure for some time longer conditions similar to those they had already experienced in other German transit camps in Greece.

II: The Crete Campaign—Prisoners in Greece and Germany

Three weeks after the British evacuation from Greece those British, Australian, and New Zealand troops who were put ashore on the island of Crete had, together with the small British garrison, to defend it from invasion. With barely time to recover from fatigue, to regroup, and to take up defensive positions with the inadequate weapons available, these troops had to deal with a full-scale airborne attack. Preceded by bombing, the first units of the German air invasion force, previously assembled on the Greek mainland, landed on the island on 20 May. The invaders were superior in weapons and were in complete control of the air. Fortunately the Royal Navy made the situation less hopeless by destroying or dispersing the seaborne landing force. The enemy on Crete were at first more than held in some desperate fighting; but once their bridgehead had been strongly reinforced, the British forces were driven back in a series of defensive actions and withdrawals. There was little time for a carefully planned sea evacuation such as that from Greece, and naval losses left fewer ships available. Under such circumstances it was inevitable that many would be left behind, and after the last warship had pulled away from its position off Sfakia in the early morning of 1 June 1941, a large number of our troops still remained ashore.

Of this number some 520 New Zealand wounded had been taken prisoner either on the battlefield or in the first-aid posts and hospitals cut off from possible evacuation by the German advance.

The figure 520 includes those who died of wounds in captivity. A good many walking wounded were able to make their way to the evacuation beach and were among the first to embark on each evacuation night.

Apart from other odd groups similarly cut off all along the north-western sector of the island and a few stragglers on the withdrawal routes south, most of those captured were taken near the beach at Sfakia. As in Greece, not all who remained behind fell into enemy hands, and many did so only after a considerable period of liberty. A few made their way in various craft direct to North Africa; many went into hiding on the island and were undiscovered by the enemy for up to two years. Some of the latter got boats and reached Greece or one of the islands of the Aegean, and many of these were able to make good their escape to Turkey or Libya. Nevertheless the great majority of those not evacuated were rounded up by the German forces. In all 2180 of the New Zealanders in Crete became prisoners of war—the largest number to be captured in any single campaign in New Zealand's history.

Some of these had been taken prisoner near Maleme as early as 21 May. After a brief search for arms they were immediately made to work on the airfield, dragging away wreckage and unloading planes,

Prisoners captured in the German thrust into Libya at this period were being similarly forced to unload ‘bombs, food and petrol from JU 52's’, and protests had been made through the Foreign Office.—War Office Directorate of Prisoners of War report for week ending 5 July 1941.

carrying wounded and burying dead. Even had they known that the Geneva Convention exempted them from such work—and most prisoners had barely heard of it—their protests at this stage would have availed them little.

According to evidence supplied in the trial of General Student for war crimes, three men who did so were immediately taken aside and shot.

The German invasion troops had suffered heavy losses and were desperately trying to maintain their bridgehead: they were certainly in no mood to discuss the niceties of international law. A YMCA secretary was forced at rifle point to carry containers of ammunition; a chaplain was put to digging graves alongside the airfield, others to filling in shell holes and sandbagging gun emplacements. Among those pressed into service were walking wounded and dysentery cases. Some worked there for several days under fire from our own artillery and occasional bombing, suffering casualties as a result. No rations were issued and prisoners were left to find their own food.

Those who managed to avoid being thus commandeered for forced labour on the airfield were taken to a holding area near Maleme on the western bank of the Tavronitis River. This the Germans had established early in the battle for captures in the Maleme sector. There they were searched, and all papers, steel helmets, possible weapons, and occasionally valuables were taken. The Germans seem to have wasted little time in interrogation.

One or two German soldiers demanded, under threat of shooting, information regarding minefields ahead, but this does not fall into the category of what is usually understood by interrogation.

One New Zealand officer who had commanded Greeks received an intensive questioning, but it was usually a cursory affair, mixed with conversation on such propaganda lines as, ‘Why come so far to fight for England?’

Similar questions or expressions of surprise at the Dominions' having sent expeditionary forces to aid Britain were the experience of many other prisoners both at this and at later stages of the war.

In the early stages of the battle for Crete the disorganisation of the German forces probably precluded immediate interrogation; and the speed of the German advance once it got under way superseded any tactical advantage that interrogation might normally be expected to give. So far as it concerned information of strategical or political value, the German Army does not appear to have developed interrogation much beyond the type of thing quoted above and the ‘Red Cross form’

See Chapter 2, p. 23.

which was issued later at the transit camp. In general, beside the interrogation methods of the Luftwaffe, even in this early period, those of the Wehrmacht look rather like the work of amateurs.

At the holding area near Maleme, as at the airfield, there was no attempt to provide rations, and for the first few days there was some kicking and other rough treatment from nervy and ill-tempered guards. The Germans claimed to have found some of their men horribly mutilated and suspected the British troops, though they later admitted this to be quite unjustified. Nevertheless for those captured while the rumour was current, the situation was ugly. A chaplain and some walking wounded were lined up against the outside wall of their RAP ready to be shot, and were saved only by the intervention of a German wounded officer who had been well treated. Similar timely pleas by recaptured Germans probably saved many others, and those who found themselves the prisoners of their former captives reaped the reward of their own treatment of the enemy. The front-line German troops were on the whole much better in their behaviour than some elements of the occupation force which later carried out such brutal mass executions of the Cretan civilian population.

The alleged German use of prisoners during the Crete battle as a ‘screen’ between themselves and British fire became in New Zealand a matter for public controversy at the time of the War Crimes trial of General Student.

The German officer commanding the airborne invasion force in Crete. His trial as a war criminal took place in Germany during May 1946. He was found guilty of being responsible for cold-blooded shootings and for the use of prisoners in unloading war-like stores, but not for the use of prisoners as a ‘screen’. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but the sentence was not confirmed. See also New Zealand Official History, Crete.

That prisoners were placed in this unenviable situation is clearly stated by so many survivors of the ‘screen’, as well as by those who tried to fire through it, that it may be taken as established. That it was the German troops' intention to use them thus, much less General Student's, is not so clear. A large body of prisoners in the custody of three or four guards would inevitably have to be driven ahead of them, if it were to move at all. The reconstruction in 1946 of the motives behind the conduct of German troops and commanders in the heat of a battle fought in 1941 must have been a task fraught with great difficulty. Our own arrangements for the treatment of prisoners in the field at this stage of the war were of the haziest, and it is not impossible that enemy instructions to their lower ranks on the same topic were equally sketchy.

The average German soldier seems in fact to have been at a loss to know what to do with wounded prisoners. A New Zealand NCO found lying wounded near the crossroads at Galatas was given a field dressing and then fired on after the German soldier had walked twenty yards away. But those that followed later gave him drugs and filled his empty water bottle; and next day he was taken to Maleme in an ambulance. Wounded captured near Maleme airfield were brought back to a German dressing station in a wine-cellar in Tavronitis village, and then taken on to the prisoners' holding area. A wounded officer recounts how in the cellar a German with an arm wound gave him his chair, and how he received kindly, though little, attention from German medical orderlies in the holding area. When the British withdrawal began, wounded left behind in RAPs were brought back behind the German lines in trucks. Those of our own medical officers who had remained with their wounded were given a free hand to treat and nurse them, and a German medical unit helped them with dressings, instruments, drugs and anaesthetics. The wounded in 7 General Hospital on the coast north of Galatas were ‘well looked after by the Germans’. On the other hand the Suda Bay hospital, after being inspected by the enemy, was ignored for the first week. Cretans brought the patients food, and without their kindness they would have been on the way to starvation. One New Zealand dressing station in the village of Neon Khorion, about three miles from Kalivia, actually had a month's supply of food taken away by the invaders. But once the Germans had stabilised their position they did what they could to help, and some of those stationed near an Australian dressing station at Kalivia came into the wards in the evening to share their cigarettes and chat. One prisoner writes: ‘… our talks were of a friendly nature. No mentioning anything detrimental to either side. Neither side bothered about information….’

Statement by a wounded New Zealand sergeant.

Although very little food was supplied, the treatment of our wounded by the German medical corps seems to have been as humane as it was within their power to be. Our own doctors speak of their correct behaviour and co-operation. From the first day the policy seems to have been to fly the badly wounded direct to Greece,

By 5 June 220 officers and 976 other ranks of the Commonwealth forces had been flown to Athens.

and British and Germans took their places in the earliest planes according to the seriousness of their condition. In little over a week all cases needing evacuation had been emplaned in Ju52s and landed at Athens, Corinth, or Larissa.

The aircraft were not marked as ambulance planes, and at least one carrying wounded was shot down on the way to Greece.

Thence an ambulance or truck—the journey in the latter sometimes made needlessly rough and painful by the whim of a callous driver—brought them to the hospital at Kokkinia, near Piraeus, or to the newly set up emergency hospital in the Polytechnic School at Athens. Both were now running smoothly under the control of our own medical personnel, and although some of the wounded were beyond recovery when they arrived, hundreds of others were nursed back to health in the months that followed.

Near the southern village of Sfakia on 1 June the last scenes of the battle of Crete were being enacted. From hill positions overlooking the coast, German alpine troops began mortaring the miscellaneous remnants of the British forces below. Many of them had been without food for several days, and though most had carried their arms, ammunition was in negligible supply. It was known that no further major evacuation was possible, and to avoid purposeless loss of life orders to capitulate had been passed on to senior officers at an early morning conference. There was no alternative for the men but to abandon any thought of further resistance and destroy what weapons they could. When the Germans arrived there was a light search and a German officer gave an address on the exceptional amenities to be found in Germany's prisoner-of-war camps. The crowd of prisoners was moved uphill to a village, and in the afternoon, formed into groups of 200-odd, began the long trek back over the hills to the north.

There were no rations and little water until the end of the second day's march, and for men who started tired and hungry the going was strenuous along hot and dusty roads under a burning sun. Hurried slaking of parched mouths indiscriminately at whatever pools and streams appeared along the route, no doubt bred much of the disease which appeared later. The German guards on the whole do not seem to have been brutal, though they kept the line of march going so that all the prisoners had completed the thirty miles to the north coast by 3 June. Many fell sick by the roadside—an officer who had stuck it out sat down quietly in a doorway in Canea and died; and the exhaustion from the march no doubt helped the mounting toll of sickness among the mob of prisoners now collecting at the former 7 General Hospital area.

This had been chosen as the site for the main prisoner-of-war camp on the island. Here, on a sandy coastal area three miles west of Canea, a mass of prisoners was being herded together to form ‘Dulag Kreta’, better known to most of the prisoners as ‘Galatos Camp’. Prior to the arrival of the long columns from Sfakia, a chaplain and one or two NCOs had succeeded in achieving reasonable order among the small numbers there, salvaging enough bivouac tents to give everyone shelter. But the masses of new arrivals swamped the available facilities, though a New Zealand hospital corporal who had established an RAP made a great effort to cope with the daily sick parade of several hundred. As they straggled in, hungry, bedraggled and weary from the march north—Australians, British, Cypriots, Greeks and New Zealanders—they lay down on any available open space under what makeshift covering from the blazing sun they could improvise. Dormitory, meal area or latrine, it was all the same—whatever arrangement gave the least effort. For water there were long queues at an old well of the type once worked by an ox. Many of the dead lay still unburied along the roads, in ditches, and among the olive groves, and an overpowering stench and buzzing bluebottles dominated the camp area. Sickness and hunger helped to bring morale to a low ebb. Many, incensed at being the victims of what seemed yet another fiasco, somewhat naturally blamed their commanders and those in charge of the general conduct of the war, and some in their bitter disappointment vowed that they were glad to be prisoners to let someone else have a turn at being muddled about to no purpose.

Gradually officers and NCOs were able to create some kind of order. By 8 June the Australians had been moved elsewhere and the 5000-odd remaining had been organised into groups (one containing 1500 New Zealanders), an area had been allocated to each, and the senior British officer with his adjutant had appointed NCOs to take charge of them. On the 9th the officers were flown to Greece, with the exception of nine who were kept for administrative and medical duties at the camp. Enough tents were salvaged to put everyone under cover in orderly rows, and shovels were obtained to enable proper latrines to be dug. The three hospital buildings, together with a few marquees, were organised by the senior medical officer as a 200-bed camp reception hospital. The poor food, overcrowding, and insanitary conditions produced a crop of scabies and dysentery.

‘During June, July and August, estimated that every prisoner of war had at least one attack, and many two of sonne dysentery.’—Lt-Col W. H. B. Bull, NZMC, Medical Report on Prisoner of War Life in Crete.

These cases and others of malaria, of poliomyelitis,

‘… in all some 15 cases of infantile paralysis appeared with no more deaths.’—Ibid. The first case had proved fatal.

and of woundings by trigger-happy guards kept the five hospital wards full and their staffs continually occupied.

The fact that, in spite of the unhealthy conditions in the camp and the lack of facilities in the hospital, only 23 deaths are recorded from 1212 admissions is a tribute to the work of the medical staff.

After a few weeks the sick and wounded from the dressing stations near Suda, together with the medical staffs looking after them, were brought in too.

Rations were never sufficient

Approximately 1000 calories daily.

to keep men healthy, and for some weeks the guards winked at prisoners' leaving camp to get fruit and other food nearby and allowed Cretans to bring basket-loads to the camp fence. Authorised foraging parties too were allowed to bring in rice and other supplies from British dumps. When the German food supply became more regular, prisoners' daily meals resolved themselves into a cup of porridge or rice, a cup of bean stew, and two-thirds of a pound of sometimes sour and mouldy bread. With such a meagre and monotonous diet, it is perhaps not surprising to find men boiling up bird-seed and finding it good, fighting for food at the camp fences, and scavenging in a rubbish heap for mouldy bread discarded as unfit for human consumption.

Beyond the fatigues of the camp there was little for men to do but sleep during the day, unless they had drawn a place in one of the German burial or working parties.

‘By arrangement with the Germans, many parties were sent to Galatos for the purpose of identifying & marking British graves.’—Lt-Col Bull, op. cit.

The former were avoided as hard and unpleasant work, the latter sought after for the opportunities afforded of picking up extra food. A stretch of beach included in the camp bounds became a means at once of recreation and cleanliness, and was probably the reason that the camp remained so long free of vermin. In the later stages there were improvised games of cricket. In addition to two church services daily, the chaplain organised evening concerts and debates. A wireless set smuggled in by a working party enabled him to tack a news session on to the evening service. Morale improved and the wave of fantastic rumours which swept the camp in its initial stages gave place to a more reasoned and sober view of the war.

At Dulag Kreta there was no issue of capture-cards

There was an issue of field postcards on 26 June, which were sent off later from Germany after censorship. One bears the censorship stamp of Stalag VIIIB and postmark 18 October. It reached New Zealand in late December. None seem to have gone to Geneva.

within the first week or so, and it seems doubtful whether the early nominal rolls at any rate were ever sent on by the Germans. It happened, therefore, that men got away from the camp before they were officially prisoners of war, and their activities are therefore outside the scope of this volume. Yet many were in fact several weeks in enemy hands before making a break, and the Crete escapes

Over sixty New Zealand escapers got back to Alexandria by submarine. This made up the majority of our escapers, a few others having got back via Greece or the Aegean islands. A number of evaders (men who had successfully evaded capture) got back by these two routes and a few direct to North Africa. See also New Zealand Official War History, Crete, Appendix VII.

are so numerous that they constitute a notable feature of the campaign. It is largely guesswork even to estimate the numbers who broke from captivity there, just as it is difficult to disentangle evaders from escapers among those who got back to Allied territory direct from Crete, those who made their way to Greece or one of the Aegean islands and got back from there, and those who were finally recaptured or had to give themselves up, too sick to continue. But as numbers of eye-witnesses speak of ‘men breaking out every night’, of thirty getting away in one such party and fifteen in another, it is clear that the numbers were considerable.

The New Zealand officer in charge of the compound of Greeks puts the figure of escapes from his compound at close on 400.

In July New Zealanders and Australians were stated to be at large all over the western end of the island, a dozen or more in many villages.

Most of the escapes took place in June and July

At least forty of the ultimately successful New Zealand escapers got away in June and 13 in July. On the night of 18 June alone 30 broke out of camp.

from the Galatas camp, where the prisoners were at first ‘loosely guarded’. It was said to be comparatively ‘easy’ to crawl out at night under the wire of the compound after a sentry had passed, and under cover of darkness to make the shelter of the vineyards and olive groves across the road. Although some of the nearby fields were occasionally lit up by Very lights and raked with German machine-gun fire, no one appears to have been hit, and the risk seems to have been discounted when planning an escape. In the early days of the camp some of the prisoners were allowed out unofficially to forage for food in Canea or neighbouring villages, and some casually walked away from these outings. For most men it was the lack of food and the appalling conditions of the camp which determined them in desperation to go and live elsewhere (even if only temporarily), quite apart from whether it would be possible to escape from the island. They made for the green slopes leading to the mountains behind, and many collected in the Omolos plateau high up among the ranges. Some roamed about the hills for months, following the mule-tracks from village to village, before stumbling on a means of getting away. Others lived on among the Cretans for a year or so, unable to get a boat, and were eventually recaptured. The idea of securing a boat to escape in had been in the minds of some escapers when they left the camp. But although in the period just following the end of the planned evacuation a party of evaders had reached the coast of North Africa in an MLC,

A party of five officers and 154 other ranks reached the North African coast by MLC (motor landing craft) on 9 June 1941. The party included two Maori members of 2 NZEF, Pte Thompson (28 Bn) and Gnr R. P. A. Peters.

and others had got away in caiques and launches, the Germans afterwards kept a close check on all such craft and on likely evacuation points along the coastline.

The Cretans were almost invariably kind and helpful. From almost every escaper the story is one of good reception at their hands. Food, civilian clothes, guides and money were given freely, often from homes none too well stocked. Many men were nursed back to health and strength in the hill villages after arriving in a state of exhaustion from dysentery and lack of food. Here amid the pretty, grey-walled peasant cottages, the neat flower gardens, the gnarled olive and fruit trees, they had time to rest. A diet of meat and eggs, vegetables and fruit, cheese and goat's milk, with plenty of wholemeal bread and olive oil, helped their bodies to recover strength. As the weeks went by and the Germans raided the villages to look for British soldiers in hiding, to punish those whom they found harbouring them and to confiscate food and stock, the helping of escaped prisoners became a dangerous business involving much self-sacrifice on the part of local inhabitants. But food was found for them even if sometimes the Cretans themselves were hungry, and shelter was often given them at the risk of the villagers' lives and homes. The German occupation force in the western portion of the island

Italian troops occupied the eastern portion of the island, corresponding to the former province of Lasithion, east of the Lasithi Mountains, and are reputed to have treated the inhabitants reasonably well.

adopted a particularly brutal policy. Initial harshness had led to resistance from the Cretans, and so to raids on villages by the German troops. There were large-scale shootings, burning of houses—even of whole villages—and confiscation of everything that could be carried away. Some of the evaders and escapers may have got fat and lazy in their hill refuges, but most were thoughtful enough in the circumstances to remove themselves before harm came to their benefactors, and mindful enough of their right course of action to try and leave the island.

Meanwhile the Middle East branch of the War Office military intelligence section (MI9), established to assist British servicemen in enemy territory to escape, had plans in hand to rescue the considerable numbers at large in Greece and Crete. On the night of 17 July a British naval officer

Lt-Cdr F. G. Pool, RNR; awarded DSO for ‘courage and good service during the withdrawal from Crete’.

was landed from a submarine and set about collecting a party of 67 British Commonwealth evaders and escapers. On the night of 27–28 July, according to the prearranged plan, another submarine

HM Submarine Thrasher. Only three New Zealanders came off in this party.

called; the men reached it by lifeline from the beach through rather heavy seas and were taken off to Alexandria, arriving there on 31 July. The naval officer stayed ashore to make contact with those in hiding and to organise a further party. Three weeks later, on the night of 19–20 August, another submarine

HM Submarine Torbay. This party included 62 New Zealanders.

embarked a party of 125 escapers and evaders and brought off the naval officer.

… when we reached the little bay we found we were outnumbered by those who had come to farewell us…. the first members prepared to go out to the waiting submarine which had appeared close inshore at a few minutes to 9 p.m. A line had been run out to the shore supported by cork floats and we were instructed to strip and make our way to the sub by grasping this line if we were unable to swim the short distance. It was a tense period before we finally pulled out—there was enough noise to attract Hitler himself to the spot on shore….

Narrative by a New Zealand member of the party.

The submarine reached Alexandria on 22 August 1941—a successful conclusion to an operation carried out with great skill and daring.

Equally daring was the exploit of two Australians and two New Zealanders

Ptes D. N. McQuarrie (18 Bn) and B. B. Carter (27 MG Bn). All four were awarded the MM.

who at about this time left the south-west coast in a small open boat, which they rowed and sailed with a blanket sail to Sidi Barrani in 90 hours. Many of those who missed the submarine evacuations made their way in Greek vessels to the mainland of Greece. Greeks and Cretans were leaving the coast at night from the northern tip of Cape Spatha, and many British Commonwealth soldiers hearing of this made their way there, hid in caves, and joined the boatloads. In one such party a New Zealand sergeant reached the south-east coast of the Peloponnese and began to try and obtain a boat that would get them away. After many delays, disappointments, and narrow escapes from capture by Italian soldiers, this party of 17 embarked in a caique. The uncooperative Greek crew had to be overpowered and the New Zealander took command, sailing the vessel to North Africa. After avoiding enemy air attacks and surviving bombing by our own planes on the way across the Mediterranean, they ran out of fuel 20 miles from the coast. The leader of the party went ashore in a dinghy, arranged for fuel to be sent out, returned, and sailed the caique into Alexandria.

Sgt J. A. Redpath (19 A Tps Coy) was awarded the DCM for this exploit. The other New Zealanders in the party were: Sgt A. H. Empson (18 Bn), awarded MM, Sgt R. R. Witting (19 A Tps Coy), Sgt W. H. Bristow (18 Bn), Pte T. Shearer (20 Bn), Gnr G. E. Voyce (5 Fd Regt) and Dvr R. S. Barrow (Div Amn Coy).

Meanwhile on Crete the German paratroops and alpine battalions had been replaced by rather irresponsible young soldiers who had arrived as a permanent force for garrison duties, including the guarding of the prison camp near Canea. There followed much indiscriminate shooting by guards, both along the fence and into the compound, with resultant casualties

When a complaint was made concerning these woundings and fatalities, the German general commanding replied that the climate of Crete was affecting his soldiers' nerves.

both to our own people and to the kindly Cretans who brought along food. Bringing food to the camp was now forbidden as part of a campaign to prevent further escapes, and some of the occupation force were employed on the task of collecting any British soldiers still at large. Those captured were punished with a week's confinement in a small enclosure, exposed all day to the sun and without any covering at night. A fairly systematic round-up was made in August and September and many were caught waiting on the coast for boats, though many others eluded the search parties by going further inland into the mountain country. But some of the enemy patrols were even getting high up into the hills. Notices were posted in villages giving warning of the death penalty for Cretans who should harbour escaped prisoners, and leaflets were dropped about the island exhorting British troops to give themselves up.

One such leaflet read:

SOLDIERS of the ROYAL BRITISH ARMY, NAVY, AIR FORCE!

There are MANY OF YOU STILL HIDING in the mountains, valleys and villages.

You have to PRESENT yourself AT ONCE TO THE GERMAN TROOPS.

Every OPPOSITION will be completely USELESS!

Every ATTEMPT TO FLEE will be in VAIN!

The COMMING WINTER will force you to leave the mountains.

Only soldiers who PRESENT themselves AT ONCE will be sure of a HONOURABLE AND SOLDIERLIKE CAPTIVITY OF WAR. On the contrary who is met in civil clothes will be treated as a spy.

THE COMMANDER OF KRETA

To seal off the coast the Germans established daily sea and air patrols to watch for boats. But in spite of this small parties continued to get away. A British naval officer landed at the end of October to organise parties for evacuation, and after taking one party off he returned in late November for others. Through his efforts two New Zealanders

Pte L. S. Rosson (19 Bn) and Dvr S. N. Loveridge (Div Sup Coln).

came off in a party on a Greek submarine at the end of November, and 28 were among a party of 86 taken off in a large Greek caique

The Hedgebog, commanded by Lt C. M. B. Cumberlege, RNR. He was awarded the DSO for his work during the evacuation of Greece and Crete.

about the same time.

German vigilance was intensified, and many craft noticed by their patrols were rendered useless by machine-gun fire. No further New Zealanders got away until April 1942, when a party of nine under a New Zealand sergeant stole a boat and rowed it across the Mediterranean to Derna.

Sgt T. Moir (4 Fd Regt) was awarded the DCM for this escape and for his later work with ‘A’ Force. The other New Zealanders in the party were L-Bdr B. W. Johnston (5 Fd Regt), awarded MM, Pte G. G. Collins (20 Bn) mentioned in despatches, Dvr R. W. Rolfe (4 Res MT Coy), and Pte H. W. Gill (18 Bn).

The information concerning escapers and evaders thus brought back encouraged further rescue efforts. By this time Cairo was in wireless communication with agents on the island and arrangements were made to gather together further parties. On 25 May a fast motor torpedo boat landed near Bardia with a party of 31,

Including nine New Zealanders.

and a fortnight later another party of 19 was brought off in the same way.

There were eight New Zealanders in this party. It arrived back on 8 June 1942.

On 19 June a party of eight New Zealanders was brought off ‘at the last moment’ by a Greek submarine.

The New Zealand sergeant who escaped in April 1942, now seconded for duty with the Middle East branch of MI9, was convinced that there were still a number of escapers and evaders in hiding on the island and obtained permission to go there to try and collect them for evacuation. He was landed in early February 1943, and on 8 May a party of 51 escapers which he had collected was brought off following a commando raid. He himself was captured

He escaped again and headed for Selino with two German deserters in a motor car. But it proved impossible to rescue him, and he was recaptured and flown to Germany.

after having gone back to make contact with yet one more escaper. Those in the party taken off, including 14 New Zealanders, all received recognition for their ‘perseverance and determination under great difficulties’ and for their ‘fortitude in remaining undetected for nearly two years.’ This was the final rescue operation from Crete, as it was reckoned that there were few, if any, British servicemen still at large on the island.

The last New Zealander to escape from Crete, Dvr W. H. Swinburne, was one of those who broke out of Galatas camp in June 1941 by crawling under the wire. After vainly trying to contact a boat party, he joined a band of guerrillas in June 1942 and stayed with them until taken off on 8 September 1943.

The spate of escapes from the Galatas camp in June 1941 caused a speeding up of the German evacuation programme, and a number of crowded shiploads of prisoners left Suda Bay for Greece in July and the months that followed. Some of the ships were ‘incredibly filthy’, and for the hundreds crammed below in the holds the quite inadequate supply of food and water, the few rudimentary latrines slung over the side of the ship, and the battening down at night made the four or five-day trip to Salonika something of a nightmare. By August, when the numbers had been greatly reduced, camp conditions were beginning to show considerable improvement—the result of weeks of constant pressure on the Germans. Showers had been installed near the hospital, some razors, blades, and soap were procured, and rations were greatly improved. But in spite of every effort by our own officers no Red Cross supplies were ever obtained, and men began to discuss whether they really existed or were just some kind of propaganda. By early October all had been embarked except a small medical staff and about 800 prisoners for working parties, some of which were transferred to Maleme to work on the airfield.

In early January 1942 the last columns were marched along the road to Suda Bay. Three hundred for whom there was no room on the small freighter in port spent a fortnight at Suda in a filthy enclosure, ankle deep in mud. Known to these unfortunates as the ‘pig pen’, it was for most the worst ‘camp’ they had to endure. But they had some compensation when, after reaching Greece, they went to a by then reasonably clean barracks at Hymettus, near Athens, where a representative of the International Red Cross Committee distributed food and cigarettes. Some of this party continued their journey in a German tramp, the Arkadia, on top of a hold full of figs and sultanas. When the prisoners staggered from the ‘fig ship’ on to the quay at Salonika under the weight of crammed haversacks, the German guard officer conducting a search expressed wonder at the amount of dried fruit that the Red Cross in Athens had given them. The remaining 160 of the party, including three stretcher cases, did not fare so well. They reached Salonika after a 17-day trip through rainstorms and snow in a small, louse-infested Greek caique, which ran out of food some days before making port. Both at Suda and at Athens, and even from the caique, a few were able to make a break to freedom, however temporary. Indeed, in late 1941 and early 1942 there were scattered British soldiers at large all over Crete and Greece, as well as in the hundred and one islands of the Aegean.

A number of those in these last shiploads were recaptured evaders and escapers, of whose experiences in Crete some account has already been given. In Greece, too, not all of those who missed the naval evacuations had been made prisoners of war, at all events not immediately. Some had made their way from the battlefield, or had ducked into hiding soon after capture, and were at liberty for months or even years either on the Greek mainland or on one of its satellite islands. Some had reached Crete in time for the fighting, others only to fall into enemy hands almost as they landed, and others still to elude the enemy a second time and make their way back to the mainland. The number of these roving groups and individuals in Greece was being constantly augmented by those who broke away from custody either during a move or while in one of the transit camps.

Not a few of these had made their break from the British hospital at Athens and that at Piraeus, and from the convalescent camp near the latter. This was an old Greek military barracks surrounded by a stone wall, inside which was a barbed-wire perimeter. The houses and gardens of Nea Kokkinia came almost up to the stone wall, which made it easy for messages and food to be thrown across. In a rectangular area of red dust and shingle stood 16 longish brick sleeping huts containing bedboards and straw palliasses, a few other buildings for camp services, and at one time marquees to take the overflow. To this camp came those sick and wounded who were considered to have sufficiently recovered, but there were also a number of fit prisoners, making up a total varying from one to two thousand. Food was at first poor, but with money subscribed by officers from their pay, augmented by donations from the Greek Red Cross, it became possible to obtain meat and eggs, and a canteen operating in the camp sold fruit, wines and milk supplied by Greek vendors. The prisoners were left pretty much to their own devices, except that working parties were required for Kokkinia hospital on the hill above.

At first men were deterred from escape by the apparent hopelessness of getting a Greek caique and the formidable alternative of a 600-mile trek to Turkey, but messages from friendly Greeks raised their hopes. In early July two New Zealanders

2 Lt J. W. C. Craig and Cpl F. B. Haycock (both 22 Bn). In a party of six, they reached Alexandria by caique. Craig subsequently returned to Greece secretly to assist the Greek underground and help escaping prisoners. He was captured a second time and taken to Italy. Haycock rejoined 2 NZEF. For this escape Craig was awarded the MC and Haycock was mentioned in despatches.

succeeded in crawling under the wire after dark and getting over the wall into one of the nearby gardens. Through the camp garbage collector they had previously arranged a rendezvous for that night with a Greek family, who took them in and gave them civilian clothes. Next day they were taken into Athens and put in touch with an underground organisation which fitted them up with proper suits of clothes and identity cards. In the subsequent weeks while trying to arrange a boat to take them away, they met a number of other escapers. After the success of the first attempt at the convalescent camp, careful plans had been made by other patients and a mass escape

One estimate put the figure as high as 45; among them were further New Zealanders.

took place one night shortly afterwards. Three check roll-calls next morning convinced the Germans that the camp security was falling down somewhere; the commandant was replaced, and guards became considerably more alert.

It is not possible in this account to deal with the varied experiences in Greece of every escaper and evader. With the exception of those who made a quick getaway,

Three New Zealanders who had made their way to Skyros came back in a party of 31 which reached Port Said on 25 May 1941.

most of them lived for varying periods with Greek families. Often they were passed from family to family, both for reasons of security and because there were sometimes domestic intrigues in which it might be fatal for an escaper to become involved. For the escaper life centred round the finding of some craft to take him to sea. Until he found one he had to attempt to look like one of the inhabitants without arousing gossip, and to avoid troops or the type of Greek willing to betray him for the rewards the Germans soon offered. Although the chances of making contacts were greater in a city like Athens, many preferred the security of the hills, a lonely cave, or a remote country village.

In the early months escapers and evaders had to depend on help from Greek individuals or from the members of one of the Greek underground organisations, and as enemy security tightened, the parties which got away became smaller. A party of five (including one New Zealander)

WO II D. B. Hill (21 Bn).

made their way in a caique from near Volos, via Skiathos and the northern Sporades, to Turkey, which they reached on 11 September.

Although it is beyond the scope of this volume to attempt accounts of these improvised voyages, it can be said that they were often fraught with hazard both from the enemy and from the elements. A party of five British (including one New Zealand officer)

Lt R. B. Sinclair (22 Bn), mentioned in despatches.

and ten Greeks set sail in a small caique from Piraeus on 3 September, with only a school atlas to guide them to North Africa. They ran out of food and water after three days, and out of fuel just south of Crete. When nearly at the end of their tether, they were picked up at night by a British destroyer and arrived in Alexandria on 10 September.

A party of six,

There were three New Zealanders in the original party—2 Lt Craig (22 Bn), awarded MC, 2 Lt E. F. Cooper (LAD attached 5 Fd Regt), and Cpl Haycock (22 Bn). Cooper and Haycock were mentioned in despatches.

all of whom had escaped from the convalescent camp at Nea Kokkinia in early July and had since been looked after by friendly families in Athens, joined forces to secure a boat. They finally made arrangements with the Greek captain of a caique and sailed from the coast of Attica on 26 September, travelled to Antiparos and Paros, skirted Crete, and reached Alexandria on 8 October with food and fuel in hand.

A New Zealand sergeant,

Sgt D. G. MacNab (6 Fd Coy), awarded DCM. The other New Zealander in the party was Dvr J. B. Morice (Div Amn Coy).

also formerly in the convalescent camp at Nea Kokkinia, spent two months in Athens running an ‘Intelligence bureau’ for the collection of military information and the helping of escapers. He eventually organised a party of six escapers to go by hired motor caique to Turkey. The party sailed from Marathon on 3 October and safely reached the coast of Turkey six days later. There they managed to climb a steep cliff and were taken into custody by Turkish gendarmes.

From October onwards the Middle East branch of MI9 began to expand its activities; its strength was increased by the temporary recruitment of a number of outstanding escapers, and it began to organise help and rescue for escapers and evaders in both Greece and Crete. Some of the operations in Crete have already been outlined. In Greece food, clothing, and blankets were dropped by air in areas known to harbour these men—Mount Tagetus, Katerini, and Mount Olympus. Agents operating caiques continued to evacuate British and Imperial servicemen, and groups of the newly-recruited successful escapers were landed on the Greek mainland to organise further assistance and escape routes.

As the result of their activities a party of 18 was evacuated by caique from the coast near Athens on 22 November, reaching Alexandria five days later.

New Zealanders in this party were Lt H. B. J. Sutton (18 Bn), 2 Lt N. R. Flavell (21 Bn), Sgt D. J. Stott and Gnr R. M. Morton (5 Fd Regt), and Pte A. S. R. Foote (21 Bn).

After the capture of several agents and MI9 personnel, the Germans and Italians started to set traps for escapers by posing as the representatives of escape organisations. By this means they were able not only to capture a number of escapers and evaders but also to make the remainder suspicious of whoever made contact with them, and genuine MI9 agents had to carefully work out means of proving their identity. It was over five months before the next New Zealander

Dvr E. F. Foley (4 Res MT Coy), awarded MM.

was brought out from the Athens area in a party of twenty, which left Porto Rafti under MI9 arrangements on 2 May and reached Turkey two days later.

While some fifty had been making away from the convalescent camp, escape activity had been launched also in the hospital set up in the Polytechnic School. A large marble and granite building in one of the main streets of Athens, its situation made contact with friendly Greeks comparatively easy. In mid-July two of the patients made a successful break, Greeks whipping them off to safety almost as soon as they were outside the building. A day or two later some New Zealand medical orderlies successfully broke out through a door leading on to the street, though two were wounded and immediately recaptured. The Germans apparently soon reached the conclusion that this prisoner-of-war hospital was more trouble than it was worth. It was closed down shortly after the escapes, and patients and staff were transferred to Nea Kokkinia, either to the convalescent camp or to the hospital.

It was a fortunate thing for the hundreds of our wounded in Greece that not only were there numbers of British doctors, dentists, and orderlies there to treat them, but that in the early stages there was available for prisoners of war a transit hospital as well equipped as Kokkinia. A wounded man who arrived by plane from Crete speaks of the joy of being properly washed for the first time by our own orderlies, of sheets and pyjamas. Here as elsewhere there was a struggle to get sufficient rations, and the shortage of food does not seem ever to have been fully overcome. The International Red Cross delegate left funds to buy milk and special foods, the Greek Red Cross gave very generous help

Mme. Zannas of the Greek Red Cross was active in organising food for prisoners in Greece. At one stage the Greek Red Cross was spending 1,000,000 drachmae a month in ‘sending gifts to the wounded and on the revictualling of the canteens installed by their efforts in the hospitals at Kokinia and the Polytechnic School.’—Report for June 1941 by Dr. Brunel, delegate of the IRCC in Athens.

in view of the general food scarcity, and Greek nurses visiting the wards were able to bring comfort to the patients as well as to distribute much-appreciated fruit and cigarettes. But all such visits were soon stopped on security grounds by the German staff, who kept a rigid control over rations and movements in the hospital. The Germans did not interfere with the medical treatment in the hospital, except for occasional inspections by one of their senior medical officers.

Since the hospital's hurried and crowded beginning

Dr. Brunel reported that the hospital held 1676 (including medical personnel) on 6 June 1941. A member of the medical staff reported that it had between 800 and 900 beds at the peak period after the battle of Crete.

the staff had been able to develop many amenities. A canteen was established, a fund from officers' pay and a subsidy from the International Red Cross Committee funds making it possible for all ranks to buy, though high prices did not allow money to go far. Concerts were put on for the walking patients in one of the large courtyards, and after musical instruments had been obtained an impromptu dance band was able to tour the wards. Patients could write a letter a week and had a camp library to help while away the hours of recovery. As they got better they were allowed to stroll outside the buildings up to the barbed-wire fence, and stretcher cases were taken on to the roof to sunbathe. Men were able for a time to forget their hunger while lying and sitting in the Greek sunshine, reading, playing cards, and talking over the battles through which they had recently come.

During these weeks and months of recuperation, small ‘escape clubs’ had discussed how best a bid for freedom might be made when physical condition permitted. There were plenty of maps and compasses, for the German searches had been perfunctory only. Many attempts were made by those sufficiently recovered: cutting the wire and crawling through; hiding in the laundry van or the rubbish cart as it went out with a load. A New Zealand professional artist, then a prisoner, persuaded a Bavarian guard to pose for him while three Australians crawled through the wire behind his back. Two New Zealanders

L-Bdr F. S. Marshall (7 A-Tk Regt) and Spr S. E. Carson (6 Fd Coy). Both men had been wounded and sent to Kokkinia hospital for treatment. Carson was mentioned in despatches.

climbed through the wire in daylight on 30 July, when only two guards were on duty. They hid in a trench 20 feet from the wire until darkness, and then made for Eleusis and eventually reached Euboea. On 27 August they bribed a Greek to take them by boat to Skyros and reached Turkey on 3 September. Only a few breaks from the hospital were successful. After the mass escape from the convalescent camp, the hospital suffered some reprisals too: no concerts, delay in the delivery of rations and in the issue of pay—the somewhat natural reactions of the German guards to the reprimand and increased guard duties which no doubt came their way.

In August and September the Germans pushed ahead with the transport north of the prisoners in hospitals and transit camps in and around Athens. For the sick and wounded this posed a difficult problem because of the breaks in the Athens-Salonika railway line over which it was necessary to march, and because of the absence of suitable rolling-stock. A typical journey by this route has been described, and parties of convalescents, some with only partially healed wounds, fared little better. In late August a large batch of sick and wounded from Kokkinia hospital were driven to Piraeus docks in large passenger buses and embarked on the Italian hospital ship Gradisca. Those who travelled on her for the five-day voyage to Salonika speak in glowing terms of the care and good food they received from the Italian medical officers and sisters. The rest of the convalescents went north on small cargo vessels, on which the treatment and food seem to have been reasonably good although the holds were much overcrowded.

Almost all prisoners of war captured in Greece and Crete who did not escape passed through the main transit camp at Salonika, known as Frontstalag 183, an old, disused Greek barracks on the outskirts of the town. Some stayed only twenty-four hours; others were kept there up to several months to do forced labour for the Germans. Many had already been through Galatas or Corinth and other camps, but Salonika capped them all, and in its first six months of existence earned for itself an infamous reputation.

Round a clay barrack square stood rows of old Greek wooden hutments, on the floor of which rows of men had to lie.

Some of the officers had beds, which were, however, no protection against most of the varieties of vermin encountered there. Many officers preferred to lie outside at night, until indiscriminate shooting by guards made this unnecessarily risky; it was forbidden for other ranks.

These buildings were dilapidated, thick with filth, and infested with lice, fleas and bedbugs. Swarms of flies and mosquitoes and numerous rats helped to make sleep for a newcomer almost an impossibility. The German commandant and his staff seem to have made little or no attempt to provide blankets or other bedding. At one end of almost every barrack were a water tap and four latrines, which had to suffice for the 250

At one period as many as 500.

or so prisoners who were made to occupy it.

In one corner of the compound—formed by the original high brick walls and fences of barbed-wire—were two concrete huts, which were set up as a 65-bed hospital shortly after the camp opened in May and manned by Serbian

There were some 1600 Serbian prisoners there at that time.

doctors and orderlies. At that time there had been only some 300 British Commonwealth prisoners there, but it was realised that large numbers would arrive when the evacuation of Corinth began. Fortunately a few British medical orderlies were able to prepare a nearby two-storied hutment to accommodate a further 160 patients.

In early June the first drafts from Corinth began to arrive, most of them exhausted from their forced march over the Brallos Pass but somewhat cheered by their friendly reception from Greeks in the streets of Salonika. Many were by now an easy prey to sickness; some had reopened wounds. They kept on pouring in during the month until the camp population rose as high as 12,000. Throughout June more than 400 cases were treated daily at the camp medical inspection room.

The two-storied camp hospital was most admirably organised and run by Capt A. L. Cochrane (RAMC), ably assisted by Capt C. C. Cook (NZDC).

Food was the worst that the prisoners had yet experienced. Daily rations comprised three-quarters of a hard Italian army biscuit, about four ounces of bread, sometimes mouldy, a pint of watery lentil soup with an occasional flavouring of horseflesh, and two hot drinks of German ‘mint’ tea. On this diet men soon lost weight and it is little wonder that beriberi made its appearance, though the German medical officer refused to recognise it, and cases eventually rose to as high as 600. Nor is it surprising, in view of the location of the camp in the centre of a malarious belt, that there were many cases of malaria, and the German authorities were forced to make a daily issue of ten grammes of quinine. As for disinfectants, the camp hardly ever saw them, and the only drugs available were captured supplies left by our own medical units. Although not able to help in this direction, the Greek Red Cross did splendid work in providing milk, brown bread, rice, fruit, vegetables, eggs, and cigarettes for the hospital patients—a task made by no means easy by the German commandeering of local supplies.

The lot of all those below the rank of sergeant was made the harder by having to go out to work. At the six o'clock morning roll-call everyone was usually detailed for a work-party, including many genuine cases from the sick parade. A few were given fatigues in the German quarters, but most had to do heavy physical work in the heat of Salonika—shifting wood in timber-yards, unloading heavy sacks from railway trucks at a siding, pushing along 40-gallon petrol drums at the docks, cleaning out stables and working with pick and shovel. From some of the guards in charge of working parties there seems to have been a good deal of screaming and bullying and some kicking and knocking about with rifle butts; other guards appear to have been sympathetic towards those who were obviously unable to stand the heavy labour. And being in a working party had the compensation that from some jobs men were able to come back with items of food and tobacco variously obtained. In the camp itself there was much indiscriminate shooting by some of the sentries, one New Zealander being shot dead without warning and another wounded for being allegedly too near the trip-wire inside the camp perimeter. One night a sentry threw a grenade into a barrack latrine because someone had lit a match, and three men were seriously injured.

There seems little that can be said to the credit of the German authorities at Salonika. To put the best construction on things, the conditions were the result of lack of provision and supervision by the German Higher Command,

Commonwealth troops taken prisoner in Greece and Crete amounted to some 25,000, the feeding and administration of whom in a hostile country just occupied would no doubt present a considerable problem.

whose main attentions had been diverted elsewhere. But the conditions were also the immediate result of cynical neglect and exploitation by the German line-of-communication authorities on the spot, who imposed little if any check on the acts of brutally minded guards and delayed granting permission for delegates of the International Red Cross Committee or of a neutral power to pay a visit of inspection.

In the height of the summer of 1941, although many thousands had already gone north by train, the shiploads arriving from Crete again made the camp badly overcrowded. A variety of diseases was rampant, and with the sick and wounded also coming up from Athens the camp hospital and auxiliary huts at one period held 800. By working long hours British Commonwealth medical officers and orderlies managed to cope somehow with the 3000-odd patients who passed through the hospital, and it says much for their efforts that the death-roll was kept down to 80-odd. Fortunately the amputees, blind, and other serious cases in transit from Kokkinia hospital did not have to wait more than a few days for transport on to Germany, though too many had to make the journey lying on the straw of a cattle-truck.

By the end of September the camp had been practically cleared and the few serious cases that could not be moved, together with the skeleton medical staff and a number of escapers recaptured near Salonika, were shifted to four barracks wired off in a smaller area. In early November some Red Cross food parcels were received with amazed delight. Half-way through that month the Italian hospital ship Gradisca arrived with nearly all of the remaining wounded from Athens, and a few days later they left by hospital train for Germany. Gradually conditions in the camp improved: some of the last inmates—mostly recaptured escapers—speak of disinfestation, of the issue of new clothing, and of going into fumigated barracks. There seems, however, to have been little improvement in the German rations, and another period of acute hunger followed when supplies of Red Cross food temporarily ran out.

From the many working parties at Salonika and from the main camp itself right up to the end of its existence, numbers of prisoners, including many New Zealanders, made breaks for freedom. Some got away and were recaptured several times, only to be finally taken off to Germany; others made their way to Turkey and eventual freedom. Two parties got out through a camp sewer. An officer

Lt W. B. Thomas (23 Bn), awarded MC.

cut his way through a barrack backdoor and, dodging the camp searchlights, crawled through the wire and scaled a wall into the street; another party of twelve used a similar route a little later. Once in Salonika they were almost always able to rely on temporary help from Greeks, though it was not always possible to trust all civilians or police, many of whom were not unnaturally fearful of German punishment. An MI9 organisation was set up in Salonika as well as in Athens to collect parties of escapers and evaders and arrange for them to be got away by caique.

Most escapers made for Stavros or the east coast of the Agion Oros finger of the Chalcidike peninsula, the north-eastern strip of Greece being soon in German hands and policed by Bulgarians. From the coast the next step was to reach Turkey, either direct or via the island of Imbros. Many who made breaks from trains en route for Germany followed the same plans. Some navigated their own boats across the stormy waters of the northern Aegean; others persuaded Greeks to take them on trading or fishing vessels.

A party of four who met in Stavros in July 1941 bought a boat for a promised £50 and sailed it to the Turkish mainland, which they reached in early August. Of the two New Zealanders in the party, one had got away from the transit camp at Larissa and walked north;

L-Cpl W. T. W. Kerr (25 Bn), awarded DCM.

the other

Pte O. V. T. Brewer (21 Bn).

had crawled out under the barbed wire at Salonika transit camp in the early hours of one morning and had been looked after by friendly Greeks. Both made their way eventually to Stavros, where they met.

Another party of 16 which had collected on the island of Imbros was taken over to the Turkish mainland in September 1941. Three New Zealanders had all reached the island separately. They had been helped by Greek civilians and police, one of them

Pte J. Reid (20 Bn), mentioned in despatches.

having been taken across personally by a Greek policeman for a small fee. This ex-prisoner and one of the others

Pte R. T. Blackler (19 Bn).

had escaped from the train taking them to Germany, and the third had got away from the Corinth camp and made his way north on German trains.

Tpr A. Connelly (Div Cav). See p. 58.

All three had eventually walked to the Agion Oros peninsula, where they had been helped to get boats.

In October a New Zealander

Tpr W. A. Gadsby (Div Cav).

and two companions rowed across the Aegean to Turkey in an open boat, a remarkable feat of daring and endurance. Two others,

Pte J. McR. Brand (23 Bn), awarded MM, and L-Cpl W. T. F. Buchanan (23 Bn); Buchanan won the MM in Tunisia in April 1943.

both escapers from Salonika, who had made their way to Agion Oros, seized a boat and put to sea on 30 October when they heard of a large German patrol coming to search the area. Their party of seven made the island of Imbros and reached Turkey on 10 November. Another party of seven, including four more New Zealanders

Sgt J. T. Donovan (21 Bn), Cpl J. Westgate (18 Bn), Ptes D. P. Gilroy and W. S. Marshall (both 27 MG Bn).

from Salonika, also seized a boat about the same time, sailing to Lemnos and Imbros and reaching Turkey a day behind the others.

For a time it had not been too difficult for escaped prisoners to live undetected on the Chalcidike peninsula. One New Zealander,

Pte E. A. Howard (19 Bn), awarded MM.

for example, who had escaped from a working party at Salonika, spent ten weeks there trying to obtain a boat before he got away with a party of 14, which hired one and reached Turkey via Lemnos and Imbros on 2 November. But as German security increased it became more and more difficult both to remain hidden and also to get away by boat. The MI9 agents operating in the Salonika area were able to smuggle away only a few at a time. All the New Zealanders who got away after the middle of November made contact with the organisation and had their final journey arranged for them. One reached Turkey in December,

Pte W. A. Le Lievre (19 Bn).

another in May 1942,

Lt Thomas (23 Bn). See p. 80.

and still another in late October 1942.

Pte P. R. Blunden (20 Bn), awarded MM. See p. 83, note 1.

All these men had made several attempts to get away and had shown great courage and tenacity. Most of those unable to obtain a boat or a passage fell eventually into the hands of German patrols or security police. A few who in despair tried to make their way back to southern Greece were in the main picked up by the Italian occupation forces, which since September 1941 had taken over the territory south of Olympus.

An account of the few who managed to remain at liberty and finally escaped to Allied territory is given in Chapter 6, pp. 227–33. Those recaptured by the Italians were claimed by Italy as her prisoners of war.

The move of prisoners to Austria or Germany was for most of the British officers and men transported their first experience of travelling long distances in closed cattle-wagons. From June 1941 until April 1942 long trainload after long trainload of this human cargo travelled north on journeys lasting from five to ten days. Accounts of the experiences of various parties at different periods vary in details, but there are features common to almost all. An average of 35 officers in a wagon made it difficult for everyone to lie down; yet the numbers rose to 55 for other ranks. Biscuits and tinned meat—the only rations—seem usually to have been issued only for a four-day journey and generally on a very lean scale. The Serbian populace, however, seems to have been very generous with gifts of bread and farm produce as the trains passed through their pleasant countryside, and the Serbian Red Cross at Belgrade met many of them with hot soup, food, and cigarettes. On the longer journeys, too, there seem to have been small additional German issues, albeit rather haphazard. As the cattle-trucks had the openings barred or wired and the doors fixed to prevent escape, the lack of a supply of water and of any sanitary arrangements in them was probably the most serious hardship—the more so as many men were suffering from intestinal disorders. On occasions trucks were not opened for as long as 22 hours. Sleep was of course difficult on the hard, jolting floor of a goods-wagon, and in the summer the chilling draughts at night following the baking, sweaty heat of the day did not make it any easier. For those who travelled in winter in these cold trucks the icy temperatures encountered as the trains moved north over the ranges became something of a torture. One report by a senior officer speaks of the guards on his train as correct in their behaviour; but it is clear at least that on many trains the truck doors could have been opened more frequently. It is probable that guards were few and overworked and not over-comfortable themselves; and it may be that their omissions to attend to the physical needs of the prisoners were the result of laziness rather than of malice.

Moreover, their tempers were never improved by an escape or an attempt at it; yet in spite of threats of reprisal shootings at the outset of each journey, breaks occurred from almost every train. Though there were no such shootings, there were instances where the remaining occupants of a truck were subjected to kicking, clubbing with rifle butts, and beating with sticks. It is impossible to estimate with any accuracy the numbers who left the trains in this way. Some were recaptured only to escape from another train later. At least five New Zealanders who broke loose eventually reached Allied territory. The example which follows is typical of their experiences. In October 1941 the inmates of one truck cut a hole with smuggled tools through the wall near the sliding door, reached outside to undo the catch, and were able to open the door. Ten jumped clear before the guard began firing and signalled the train to stop. By the time it had come to a halt the escapers were in hiding well behind, ready to head for one or other of the Greek villages and so begin the second stage of their escape.

Pte Blunden (20 Bn) was, so far as is known, the only New Zealander in this party to reach Allied territory.

The first trainload of officers was unloaded at Biberach in Bavaria on 16 June and marched to the nearby camp, Oflag VB. After the gruelling journey north following weeks in the transit camps of Greece, they arrived in Germany, as one officer put it, ‘lousy, bearded, hungry, tired, and dejected’. There was apprehension about how much longer their health would survive the type of conditions under which they had been living in Greece, and dread that Germany might be even worse. Having resigned themselves to the almost continual state of disorganisation in which they had existed since capture, they were quite unprepared for their reception at the oflag. Here, after a routine search and a hot shower provided by the Germans, they went into an orderly camp, where food and friendliness were lavished on them by the occupants. They discovered with surprise that British Navy, Army, and Air Force officers had already built up an organisation capable of coping with most of the difficulties of life in a prison camp and with the idiosyncrasies of German guards. No one seemed hungry, everyone had the appearance of fairly good health, and morale was high. Hope dawned for the newcomers, and a few encouraging words of greeting from the senior British officer, Major-General V. M. Fortune,

Later Sir Victor Fortune, KBE, CB, DSO.

acted like a tonic on morale. One of the officers present still remembers his words well enough to repeat them ‘almost verbatim’:

Gentlemen. In spite of being prisoners of the enemy you are still honourable British officers. You have not disgraced yourselves nor have you been dishonoured by others whom you may think have contributed to your capture. You have not been defeated, nor has the Empire, nor will it ever. We have all suffered a few temporary reverses, but these should only serve to strengthen us for more bitter struggles before final victory is achieved. We as prisoners of war still have our duty clearly before us, we must continue the fight behind the enemy lines.

In Biberach everyone had his own eating utensils, a clean palliasse, pillowslip, and towel—luxuries indeed for the new arrivals. They were housed in modern concrete blocks, divided into separate rooms with a reasonable number in each. These contained steel-frame two-tier beds with wooden slats, of the type later well known in many German camps for officers and NCOs. The camp was free of vermin and there were good washing facilities, with hot showers at least every ten days. The German rations were much better than the prisoners from Greece had yet experienced; they were supplemented from Red Cross supplies, and the meals were properly cooked in a central kitchen. Letter-cards were regularly issued for writing home; pay in camp money (Lagergeld) was regularly credited. There were organised educational classes and facilities for sport and exercise. To those with fresh memories of Corinth and Salonika it all seemed like a pleasant dream. But it should not be forgotten that such a state of things was the fruit of months of hard work, good leadership, and skilful handling of the German authorities.

As further parties of officers arrived from Greece, some of the original occupants of the camp were sent to Titmoning. The health of the newcomers rapidly improved with the better food and camp conditions, though it was to take a long time to recover the two stone in weight which some had lost. A committee controlled attempts at escape, newcomers being allowed for the time being to assist but not actually to make a break. During the summer a number of such breaks were made, mainly by means of disguise or concealment on transport, and on 14 September 26 got clear through the longest tunnel that had yet been made. After each break there were the usual searches, extra parades, and minor restrictions. It was probably the considerable number of breaks from the camp, together with the closeness of Biberach to the Swiss border, that decided the Germans to transfer the officers elsewhere. In October they were moved to a large vacant camp at Warburg, where British officers from all over Germany were being collected.

Most of the officers from Crete who had been held some weeks in Salonika were finally transported to the Baltic port of Lubeck and accommodated in Oflag XC, a few kilometres out. A former German army camp, its quarters and general facilities were on a par with those at Biberach, and the canteen seems to have been much better stocked. But no well-organised British community was in occupation to welcome the newcomers and show them the ropes;

There were about fifty RAF officers transferred from Stalag Luft I and a few from Dulag Luft.

and no Red Cross food was available during their six weeks' stay. The greater part of the German food provided consisted of potatoes and bread, and was so meagre in quantity that loaves were often divided with the aid of a ruler to ensure that each man got an accurate share. The effect of the lean camp rations on these men who had come there after months in bad transit camps was so obvious when, in early October, they were all transferred to Warburg, that they were given double Red Cross issues there for a while to enable them to recover lost weight.

The trainloads of other ranks were distributed between the town of Marburg, on the Drau just south of the Yugoslav border, and Wolfsberg, a little to the west in Austria. By July 1941 Stalag XVIIID, at Marburg, contained nearly 4500 British Commonwealth prisoners from Greece and Crete, including 800-odd New Zealanders. Over a thousand were in tents while new buildings were being constructed. The buildings already in existence were dirty and swarming with lice and bedbugs, and the camp was, in the opinion of the senior British medical officer,

Maj G. H. Thomson, NZMC, who was awarded the OBE for his continuous efforts to secure better conditions for British prisoners of war in Germany in the course of his duties as a camp medical officer.

overcrowded beyond safety. There were shootings for breaches of discipline, by guards all too quick on the trigger. Yet many of the prisoners preferred Marburg to camps they went to later. At the beginning of September the arrival of a Red Cross consignment gave a great boost to morale, and thereafter regular supplies ensured a sufficient diet and at least some medical supplies for the camp. Moreover, although the German commandant and some of his staff were usually inefficient and unreasonable, guards were often rather easygoing, and it was comparatively simple (especially with Red Cross chocolate and cigarettes) for prisoners to persuade them to give them an outing—to the cinema, to a swimming hole, or to the local store for shopping with the 70 pfennigs

A Reichspfennig was one-hundredth of a Reichsmark. At the exchange rate agreed by Britain and Germany of £1 = 15 RM, 70 pfennings represented just over 11d. The pay was really 1.80 RM a day, from which 1.10 RM was deducted for food, board, and camp fund thus: Food.80 RMBoard.20 RMCamp fund.10 RM

a day they earned on working parties.

Almost immediately after the delousing and registration which followed their arrival, a number had gone to work-camps, Arbeitskommandos, in the district. They were made to work on roads, on railways, in factories, clearing a building site, or on odd jobs for the local council. Many were hired out to local farmers and lived well on the farms, though their hours of work were very long. Although warned strictly about fraternisation with prisoners, many of the civilians were soon on friendly terms, which in spite of the heavy penalties involved

Sentences of up to ten years' imprisonment (in a military prison) for the prisoner of war.

sometimes ripened into intimacy. While it was in summer comparatively easy to get away from such places of work, it was difficult to go far without being caught, and the long distance to be covered on both land and sea before reaching Allied territory caused most men to regard final escape as impracticable. Nevertheless many broke camp, even if only to get a change of scene, and a few reached Hungary or the partisans in Yugoslavia.

The truckloads of prisoners not destined for Marburg found their way to Wolfsberg in south-eastern Austria. The little town is set in a broad green valley against a background of snow-capped mountains and fir-planted slopes. The camp just outside the town had originally held Belgian officers,

At that time it was known as Oflag XVIIIB.

but for some months before the arrival of British prisoners had become a base camp for Belgian and French labour detachments and had been renamed Stalag XVIIIA. In order to keep the camp free from vermin, the trainloads which began to arrive from Greece at the end of June were temporarily segregated in eight large tents erected on a spare piece of ground outside the camp. They were searched, given a hot shower, their clothes were deloused, and they were registered in the camp records. Some were issued with assorted pieces of captured continental uniform, with wooden clogs, and with unfamiliar square pieces of cloth in place of socks. As fresh trainloads (sometimes a thousand strong) arrived, all fit prisoners who had been ‘processed’ were sent off to working camps to make room for the new arrivals. Those who remained were housed in converted brick stables, where three-tier bunks with a palliasse and a blanket had been prepared for them and rather primitive washing troughs and latrines improvised. By 21 July the camp strength included some 5500 British and Dominion prisoners, 3700 of whom had been sent on to various work detachments.

The German rations were estimated to provide about 1800–2000 calories a day

The estimate is that of an IRCC delegate (a doctor), and would have been made before the ration cut of June 1941.

, which when supplemented by Red Cross parcels provided an ample diet, though there were at first delays over the Red Cross issues. With good food, a clean camp, and the healthy climate of the district, the British medical officer was able to report in August that, although the prisoners had arrived from Greece in a very bad condition, their health was now improving.

It did not take the British Commonwealth prisoners long to weld themselves into a strong community. An energetic ‘man-of-confidence’ was elected to deal with the German authorities in all matters regarding the prisoners' welfare;

The term ‘man-of-confidence’ is a literal translation of the French ‘homme de confiance’, which appears in the French text of the 1929 Geneva Prisoners of War Convention, its equivalent in the English text being ‘representative’.

a senior warrant officer took charge of internal discipline and administration, presiding over a committee of hut commanders. At first no one knew the rights of prisoners under the Geneva Convention, but they were quick to learn after the visits of United States consular representatives and delegates from the International Red Cross Committee. Non-commissioned officers who had unwittingly obeyed orders and gone out to work were informed of their privileges. When British battle dress arrived in September, the prisoners finally had their way over the control of its issue, though not without considerable argument. No doubt their path was made a little easier by the fact that the deputy commandant was reasonably well disposed towards them.

Gradually the amenities of the camp were improved. Some books arrived in August and gave men something to talk about other than the campaigns they had just fought, which had up till then been the subject of endless recountings, elaborations, and sometimes recriminations. A small theatre was rigged up in one of the rooms. The arrival of mail from England in September supplied the link with the outside world for which many were hungry, though men from Australia and New Zealand had to wait longer for their first letters from home. As winter drew on the cold began to cause hardship to the many with insufficient underclothing, no socks, and worn-out boots. The stables proved damp and comfortless and the promised shelter for latrines and washing troughs did not materialise. By October the German camp authorities were administering some 22,500 prisoners, whose representatives were encountering that delay in effecting promised improvements which many camp leaders elsewhere were also finding so exasperating.

Conditions in the Arbeitskommandos depended very largely on the character of the German NCO in command and of the employer for whom the prisoners worked, though living quarters were generally quite good. A large party working on a dam at Lavamünd was comfortably housed and enjoyed good camp facilities, including hot showers daily. Eighty men working in a brick factory lived in the well-lit and heated rooms of specially built barracks. A party of 160 engaged on road work was lodged in a large converted house. Two hundred men working for an engineering firm had single-tier beds with three or four blankets, ample space for sport, flower and vegetable gardens—in the words of the inspecting IRCC delegate, ‘a model camp’. Their hours of work varied between eight and nine and a half, with Sundays free for most, though laundry and camp fatigues took up a good deal of their free time. They were fed on the larger scale of ‘heavy’ civilian worker's ration,

It included, for example, 500 grammes of bread, as against the ordinary ration of 320 grammes.

together with Red Cross food from the stalag. On the other hand, with only a medical orderly in the camp and an often rather indifferent civilian doctor paying infrequent visits, injuries were sometimes badly treated and incipient illnesses neglected. There were sometimes delays in the smaller Arbeitskommandos in getting letter-cards, pay, and canteen facilities. And many were not used to the ‘stand-over-you’ type of foreman and the longer hours of work common in European countries.

Many of the later train-loads of prisoners leaving Salonika between August 1941 and April 1942, including medical officers and convalescents, travelled north as far as Silesia to Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf.

see pp. 30–1 for an earlier account of the camp.

The camp had a different atmosphere from that of the days when the British Army prisoners from the campaign in France straggled wearily in and the RAF NCOs and other ranks began to arrive from Dulag Luft. To the newcomers the contrast with what they had known up till then of prisoner-of-war conditions was as striking as that experienced by the officers who had gone to Biberach. The impression made is expressed in one report thus: ‘On 20 October 41 our arrival at Lamsdorf seemed to afford a glimpse of another world—a well-organised camp, food in plenty, PWs smart in new battle-dress and a high morale….’ As at Biberach, the progress made was largely attributable to the efforts of the camp leaders, in this case two very competent British Army warrant officers. A new German commandant appointed in 1941 seems to have been more amenable to reason than his predecessors. This is not to say that material conditions at Lamsdorf were comfortable.

Stone barracks with concrete floors each gave a floor space of about 75 yards by 12 yards, divided into two large rooms by a five-yard space containing an ablutions room and a room for washing clothes. About 350 men slept in each barrack in three-tier bunks, of which the uppermost was very close to the ceiling and the lowest within ten inches of the floor. In summer the barracks were dry and admitted plenty of light and air, but the water supply would often fail except for a few hours each day. In winter the floors were almost constantly wet from tramping feet and the barracks festooned with damp clothing. Missing windows had to be boarded up to keep out the weather; even so, the low temperatures caused layers of ice to form on the inside walls and on the floors of the ablution rooms. Five pathetic light globes in each room made winter reading almost impossible, and there was never enough fuel to supply the two or three large stoves. Latrines were of the deeppit type, cleared at too infrequent intervals by pumping into a mobile tank, which then spread its contents over the surrounding fields

This method of sewage disposal was in fairly general use for prisoner-of-war camps in Germany.

within 50 yards of the stalag perimeter. Nobody was allowed out of the barracks after 9 p.m., and the inside night latrine provided was quite inadequate for the numbers who had to use it. Inadequate provision for delousing new arrivals was responsible for the introduction of vermin into the camp, to which an outbreak of typhus towards the end of 1941 was thought to be attributable. Fortunately the British medical staff took prompt and effective measures, and the German camp staff were jolted into co-operation, with the result that only three deaths occurred.

The delousing station was outside the camp but was operated by British Commonwealth medical orderlies from within. It was used not only for British but also for Russians. Typhus broke out in the camp on 28 November, the first six cases being from among medical orderlies working in the delousing station. On the orders of the senior British medical officer, Lt-Col Bull (NZMC), all hair was removed from the heads and bodies of the inmates of the camp within the next four days and a strenuous effort was made to rid the camp of lice. When fresh cases occurred on 6 December, Bull strongly recommended to the German authorities certain improved arrangements for isolation, disinfestation, and personal hygiene. These were accepted and put into practice. Only 18 cases of typhus occurred in the camp and only three of these proved fatal.

If the buildings and sanitation left much to be desired, their standard was very little lower than that of the German rations. Fortunately there was a stock of Red Cross food parcels sufficient for a while to issue one a week. Potatoes were cooked, and soup and hot drinks made in a central kitchen in huge boilers. One warrant officer summed up the food situation by saying, ‘You could exist but not get fat’. In the sleeping barracks, to which the food was carried in large containers, there was less than half the number of tables and forms necessary to seat all the occupants, and no eating utensils were supplied.

While there was a shortage of drugs, medical facilities were it seems quite adequate, though there were the same difficulties at working camps as have been noted with Stalags XVIIIA and XVIIID—especially in a nearby coalmine Arbeitskommando. At the head of the prisoners' own administration was the camp leader—in this camp the elected ‘man-of-confidence’, a very able British warrant officer. He appointed a representative for Red Cross supplies and correspondence, a camp sergeant-major, and a leader for each compound

There were ten compounds, each of four barracks intended to hold about 1000 men, but in which more than 1500 were packed on occasion. At the end of 1941 the camp population (all nationalities) was about 20,000.

(of about 1000 men), who in turn appointed his own barrack leaders.

Recreation seems to have been well organised and aided by ample equipment, thanks largely to the World Alliance of YMCAs: sports, games, theatre, arts and handicrafts, and gardening were all flourishing. Music was of a good standard, with an orchestra performing as early as 1941. After much persuasion the Germans agreed to set aside half a barrack each for a church, a theatre, and a school. The last was inadequate to accommodate all those who flocked to the language and other classes offered.

A New Zealand warrant officer who was at the camp wrote:

The bearing of the British soldiers who were captured in France and their generosity and organisation was the biggest factor in improving morale ….

Most informants are agreed that an adequate supply of food from whatever source sent morale up, and lack of it caused despondency. For a while the German authorities broadcast ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ sessions over the camp loudspeakers in an effort to obtain converts. But the scornful laughter that greeted the more far-fetched of the broadcast statements, and the lack of any tendency on the prisoners' part to act otherwise than as the temporary detainees of a nation that would ultimately be defeated, probably influenced the authorities in later discontinuing them. Indeed the early German propaganda was so naïve, and showed so little psychological understanding of British prisoners, that many of the latter developed the habit of disbelieving on principle every statement, oral or printed, which came from enemy sources. Escape from the heart of western Europe was in this period generally considered wellnigh hopeless, though a camp organisation helped a constant succession of attempts, mostly from working camps. For many, breaking camp was merely a means of relief from an undesirable working party, as on recapture the offender was returned to stalag.

The increased British offensive air activity in 1941 consisting of fighter sweeps and bomber raids on the Continent was not carried out without losses in aircraft over the sea and over enemy territory. In 1941 the French underground organisations were assisting many shot-down airmen to evade capture and return to England. But not all had an opportunity to make contact with helpers, and others were caught after weeks of freedom. By October the number of New Zealand Air Force prisoners had risen to over a hundred. As early as July 1941 the British Air Force NCOs' and other ranks' compound at Lamsdorf was full to overflowing, and that at Stalag Luft I was also overcrowded.

Although 50 officers were sent from Stalag Luft I at Barth to Stalag XXA at Thorn in February 1941, and another 50 to Oflag XC at Lubeck in July, by the end of the year there were still 230 at Barth. The NCOs' compound contained 550 as early as June 1941.

Accordingly a hundred newly-captured Air Force NCOs were sent from Dulag Luft to Stalag IXC at Badsulza, in Thuringia, and another fifty to Stalag IIIE, at Kirchhain, on the northern borders of Saxony, numbers at the latter being increased during the summer to just short of two hundred. Badsulza was a large, crowded stalag, of the same type as Lamsdorf, for French, Belgian, and Serbian other ranks, the British Air Force personnel being placed in a separate barrack and not allowed to leave their own compound. Kirchhain comprised a wired compound enclosing four brick bungalows, which had been a pre-war youth hostel and rifle club, now shared by the British Air Force prisoners with some French. In spite of strict security measures at the latter camp, twelve men managed to break out in October; rather brutal reprisals were taken on the remainder.

Their boots were taken away and they were made to move in wooden clogs at their fastest pace at rifle point round a field for two and three-quarters hours, even though many men were physically weakened on account of the poor rations received over the previous months.

At Oberursel interrogation centre it was still the policy to solicit information in a smooth and plausible manner, and on release to the adjacent transit camp, to almost kill the prisoner with kindness. Thanks to adequate supplies of Red Cross food parcels, the food was good and well prepared. In the spring ski-ing parties gave place to pleasant walks in the woods. Nevertheless, by the end of the summer of 1941, 19 had made breaks from the transit camp and five from the hospital. In Stalag Luft I at Barth the spring and summer of 1941 saw regular supplies of Red Cross food coming into camp, the arrival of sports gear and books and the purchase of musical instruments, all of which gave considerable fillip to sport, educational classes, and entertainments. This period saw, besides several unsuccessful attempts, the first two Air Force escapes from Germany, two RAF officers getting to Sweden.

The officers of all three services who had been in Oflag IXA/H at Spangenburg were in February 1941 suddenly transferred to Stalag XXA, a fortress at Thorn, in Poland, as a reprisal for alleged ill-treatment of German prisoners in Canada. The castle was closed up and 60-odd convalescents from hospitals, with a few doctors and chaplains, were left in the Lower camp. At the same time 50 Air Force officers from Barth were also sent to Thorn. While the German authorities denied using reprisals and claimed to be within their rights under international law, it is clear that the conditions at Thorn could not be reconciled with the spirit of the Geneva Convention. The prisoners were housed in a fort used by the Germans in 1914–18, the greatest part of which was below ground level and flanked by a moat with sheer sides. Several escapes were attempted from the fort and one Air Force officer succeeded in reaching Sweden. Meanwhile, the German officers having been removed from the offending camp in Canada, the British returned from Thorn to Spangenburg in July,

The German Government had by then agreed not to make further use of fortresses or penal establishments to house British prisoners of war. But Oflag IVC remained an obvious contravention of this principle.

both upper and lower camps becoming more overcrowded than ever. Finally, in October the officers were moved out to Warburg in conformity with the German plan of assembling all British officers in one large camp.

The last considerable batch of those seriously sick and wounded, who had come up from Athens in the Gradisca, had left Salonika by hospital train in November. The train, which was properly equipped with hospital beds and orderlies in attendance in each carriage, also carried German casualties. The journey took a devious route, dropping on the way patients, both British and German, at various hospitals which specialised in certain types of sickness or wound. In German military hospitals our men seem to have received very similar treatment to that given to the German patients. Eventually they found their way to prisoner-of-war hospitals, which varied to some extent according to the attitude of the local German authorities, though most seem at this stage to have suffered from overcrowding and to have had to rely mainly on British Red Cross supplies of bandages and dressings. The 450-bed hospital, or Lazarett, attached to Stalag VIIIB, Lamsdorf, was equipped for almost any type of operation and fully staffed by British medical officers and orderlies. On the other hand Lazarett Dieburg (attached to Stalag IXB), to which some of our wounded were sent, was reported as having rather out-of-date equipment. Others who went to Lazarett Rottenmunster (attached to Stalag VB) were reported in September as needing Red Cross supplies of food, clothing, and blankets. The efforts of British medical officers and orderlies in hospitals and camp sick-bays to secure better treatment and comfort for sick and wounded prisoners, as well as their own care for them, are beyond praise.

The plight of the maimed, incurable, and other sick whose continuance in captivity would prejudice their chance of recovery had not been neglected. The initiative on their behalf had been taken on the outbreak of war by the International Red Cross Committee, which drew the attention of belligerent powers to the articles

Articles 68 and 74.

of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention relating to repatriation of such cases and to the setting up of Mixed Medical Commissions to select candidates for repatriation, at the same time urging them to conclude agreements for the purpose on the model of that set out in the Annex to the Convention. This model was accepted by the British, German, and Italian governments at an early stage of the war, with the omission of the provisions for accommodating certain categories in a neutral country instead of repatriating them. Mixed Medical Commissions had been set up, and although in Italy progress was slow, by the end of March 1941 66 Germans and 1153 British Commonwealth prisoners had been passed as eligible for repatriation.

In addition 35 Germans and 700 British Commonwealth protected personnel were selected including a few New Zealanders. Britain had also agreed to include a number of German civilian women and children in the transport leaving from her port.

No agreement had been reached concerning the route to be used for the exchange, until in September the Germans suggested the use of the cross-Channel route, which they had previously opposed.

Dieppe was to have been the port of exchange.

Arrangements went ahead smoothly until a few days before the scheduled date, and shortly after Hitler's return from the Russian front, when there was a sudden change of tone on the German side. On 6 October the German radio broadcast that they would not agree to repatriation except on the basis of numerical equality. Britain refused to accept these new terms, and the whole scheme had to be abandoned. It appears now that the German volte-face was due to the personal intervention of Ribbentrop; and it is thought that the advance public interest shown in the British press and radio encouraged the Germans at the last moment to raise their price and so commit this ‘flagrant breach of faith’.

For this reason most careful preparations were made in each later repatriation operation to avoid publicity until it was an accomplished fact.

For the amputees, the blind, the cot-cases, who had been so near to deliverance, it was a heartbreaking experience. Though they were kept for some time at Rouen,

The Rouen party included several score without one, two or three limbs, all of whom were returned to Lamsdorf.

nothing further eventuated. It was probably this first sad failure which gave birth to a distrustful attitude towards repatriation among prisoners in Germany. Even among those selected in later years to go home, many remained sceptical until they were actually on the repatriation ship.

North Africa and Italy, 1941-42 Colour map and diagram

III: Civilians in Europe

The breakdown of this first effort at repatriation in October 1941, which was to have been the prelude to further exchanges of servicemen and civilians, wrecked all immediate hopes for negotia- tion in this field. At the end of 1940, or early in 1941, a good many of the British Commonwealth civilians in occupied Europe were placed in internment camps. The German occupation force made use of French camps for the purpose. New Zealand men, for example, in France on business at the outbreak of war or working for the War Graves Commission, were taken to La Grande Caserne, St. Denis, on the outskirts of Paris. This was a huge old-fashioned barracks, with part of the grounds enclosed by barbed wire to allow space for exercise.

Overcrowding in Ilag XIII at Wülsburg having made conditions steadily worse, in October 1941 the German authorities transferred the British internees to a camp at Tost, not far from Lamsdorf, in Silesia. Known as Ilag VIII, it already held over 1000 British internees, including 200 of the crew of the SS Orama. They were housed in a group of large institution-like buildings of brick and concrete. Many were still short of clothing, though their needs in food and tobacco were being well catered for by supplies from the British Red Cross. As early as the end of 1940 there had been a well-organised education system and a camp orchestra. In spite of this, about a quarter of the internees expressed a desire for paid work to relieve the demoralising boredom of internment camp routine, and a start had been made by the employment of a few in forestry work.

Some of the women were interned at the end of 1940 in a French camp at Besançon, Doubs, renamed Frontstalag 142. Of those who had come under its control by February, 2400 were crowded into the Vauban barracks and 500 old and sick into the St. Jacques hospital. A thousand of those originally interned had already been liberated and several hundreds more were to follow. In June the British internees were transferred to Vittel, a French watering place near Epinal, Vosges. This ‘camp’, although given the forbidding label Frontstalag 121, consisted of first-class hotels and later accommodated families as well as single persons of either sex. From Vittel a young New Zealander, Miss Olga Marks, and two British women were able to escape in August 1941, making their way to Switzerland and eventually to England in January 1942.

Other women were taken to Germany, where they were accommodated in a spacious old convent at Liebenau, near Lake Constance in Wurtemburg. Those captured at sea who had been temporarily held at Sandbostel were also brought to Ilag Liebenau. Here they seem to have been ‘well situated and kindly treated’. There was at first the same shortage of clothing and other necessities which was evident in other internment camps, though a fortunate few always seemed to have been able to move with a large amount of their personal belongings.

IV: Protection of the Interests of Prisoners of War and Civilians

The creation of new internment camps for civilians as well as additional prisoner-of-war camps for British Commonwealth soldiers captured in Greece and Crete,

The number of British prisoners had risen to over 80,000.

involved a further increase in the work of visiting representatives of the United States diplomatic staff and of the International Red Cross Committee. The German authorities limited the latter to three visits a year for each camp, in view of the fact that there were also visits from the Protecting Power, the World Alliance of YMCAs, and from German inspectors. The Germans apparently found this aspect of their adherence to the Convention something of a nuisance.

The criticisms of the delegates, the text of the reports, and the conclusions of the covering letters did not always suit the camp commandants, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There was a certain tension from time to time….

International Red Cross Committee Report on Activities during the 1939–45 War, Vol. I, p. 244.

Moreover, the existence of so-called ‘transit camps’ where, as has been seen, conditions were usually primitive, was not reported by the German authorities until some time after their establishment; and a visit of inspection was arranged only as a result of long negotiation. Yet prisoners were kept for months at Salonika and at Galatas, the latter camp receiving no visit of inspection during the whole of its seven to eight months' existence.

An International Red Cross delegation had been set up in Athens in 1940.

Not only was the circuit of camp visits enlarged, but welfare matters were constantly cropping up which entailed negotiation with the detaining power. Whereas it was the usual practice of the inspecting United States consular official merely to record complaints and criticisms for transmission to the government of the detainees, the International Red Cross Committee found it expedient to discuss many such matters on the spot and if possible effect a settlement there and then.

In view of the increased expenses of the IRCC an appeal for funds was made, to which the New Zealand Government responded with a donation of £2500 in June 1941.

There were, for example, from late 1940 onwards almost continuous negotiations regarding prisoners' rations; for although they were entitled by the Convention to the rations of ‘depot troops’, in practice they received less than those allotted to the civilian population.

There was a general reduction of the ration for prisoners of war in Germany on 3 June 1941.

There was constant dispute as to whether Germany should provide clothing in addition to that sent by the British Government through Red Cross channels. It took time to persuade the German authorities to distribute chap- lain prisoners among the various camps so as to give the greatest possible number of prisoners an opportunity for the practice of their religion. Neither Britain nor Germany could make up her mind to exchange information regarding the location of prisoner-of-war camps, in spite of air-raid casualties among prisoners of war on both sides of the Channel. Prisoners in working camps had to be protected as far as possible against excessive working hours, lack of proper medical attention, and inhumane conditions coupled with exposure to danger at work such as obtained in the Silesian coal mines.

The complaints on which such negotiations were based reached the International Red Cross Committee and the Protecting Power in a variety of ways. Their visiting delegates were entitled on each inspection to a private interview

Geneva Prisoners of War Convention.

with a ‘camp leader’—the senior officer in an oflag, the ‘man-of-confidence’

See p. 87, note 1.

in a stalag, the senior medical officer in a hospital and often in other camps too. These camp representatives made it their business in the interview to bring to light all matters on which they were in dispute with the camp authorities. Complaints often came also in letters either from camp leaders or from individual prisoners of war; still others came in letters from prisoners' next-of-kin. If during a visit nothing could be done to settle the matter on the spot, it was communicated to the British Foreign Office so that it could be examined by the various British departments, Dominion governments and committees concerned, before a formal complaint was made to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The inter-governmental committee on prisoners of war announced by the Dominions Secretary on 30 April 1941 never met. Its Sub-Committee B

Sub-Committee B never at any time ceased to conduct regular meetings no matter under what title it went.

continued the meetings concerning pay, allowances, and other financial matters which it had begun as the Inter-departmental Committee. Sub-Committee A met once on 26 June 1941 and took note of its terms of reference:

To consider such questions affecting policy and general administration of prisoners of war as concern more than one Government within the Empire with a view to avoiding undesirable differences of treatment.

After broaching the knotty questions of whether the Dominions should act in the custody of enemy prisoners as agents for the British Government, and whether they should canalise all their communications to enemy powers through the British Foreign Office, it adjourned for a month But no further meeting was called for some considerable time, as the Canadian Government, which had been in the habit of communicating direct with enemy governments through the State Department at Washington, was pressing for a revision of the whole system of committees. The present system, it claimed, mixed policy with administrative detail and allowed the committees to be swamped with a mass of British Government officials. The view of the New Zealand representatives was that the presence of the British Government experts saved time that would be lost by having to refer matters back to them, and that they had noticed no tendency on the part of the British representatives to exercise undue influence on the deliberations of any committee.

After some months agreement was reached by letter to a reconstituted committee, and on 5 November 1941 there met for the first time the Imperial Prisoners of War Committee, whose terms of reference were:

To secure co-ordination of the action of His Majesty's Governments in regard to matters relating to prisoners of war both in our own and in enemy hands.

It consisted of the Dominion High Commissioners or their representatives

The main Committee met only three times and High Commissioners were present in person at only one of these meetings. It also included a representative for India.

under the chairmanship of the Financial Secretary of the War Office, with expert departmental advisers co-opted as was thought necessary. Two sub-committees similarly constituted were to carry on the work of their predecessors. They met regularly throughout the remainder of the war and between them controlled the administration of prisoner-of-war matters within the Commonwealth. The suggestion that the British Foreign Office should act as a common channel of communication with the enemy was approved (without prejudice to the rights of the Dominions as separate signatories of the Geneva Convention) as a practical expedient to prevent the Axis governments from playing off one member of the Commonwealth against another.

One of the matters considered at the first meeting of the main Imperial Prisoners of War Committee was the notification of capture and of subsequent moves of prisoners. In addition to the official lists (with addresses)

See above pp. 9–10.

sent ordinary mail by the German Government to the United States Embassy and the International Red Cross Committee, a third copy was by arrangement sent to the War Office

The Prisoners of War Information Bureau of the War Office passed all relevant information on to the New Zealand High Commissioner's Office in London.

in London through the prisoner-of-war post. After the fall of France in June 1940, the transmission of all these lists to London was subject to severe delays owing to the interruption of mail services which has already been noticed. It was arranged, therefore, that the International Red Cross Committee would telegraph to the War Office in London short particulars as soon as the list reached Geneva. For the same reasons this arrangement was later extended to New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries, telegrams being sent to New Zealand Base headquarters in Cairo for checking and onward transmission,

The only delay occurred in the checking of details at Cairo, which was necessary to ensure accuracy. The information was also sent to the War Office, whence it was passed to the New Zealand High Commissioner's Office in London.

and also to the prisoner's home country in answer to a special inquiry.

For some time this proved the quickest route for information. But the subsequent speeding up of the prisoner-of-war post by flying it from Stuttgart to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to London, meant that a postcard from a prisoner often reached his next-of-kin before official notification of his capture, owing to the time taken to assemble official lists in Berlin. The receipt of personal mail and of answers from Geneva to cabled inquiries before any official casualty notice caused many next-of-kin in New Zealand to be highly critical of governmental channels of communication; and so long were the delays in notification of prisoners from the Greece and Crete campaigns, that many relatives spent money on reply-paid cables to Geneva. There were on 1 October 1941 still 2400 missing servicemen unaccounted for.

In general the German authorities would not include the name of a prisoner on an official list until he had reached a permanent camp. For those taken in Crete especially this was not for anything up to six months after capture.

As a result of many representations on the matter, the New Zealand Government investigated the possibility of appointing a liaison officer to work with the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva in facilitating the transmission of New Zealand names. The Committee, while pointing out that only neutrals were eligible for appointment to its staff, suggested the visit of a New Zealand Red Cross representative to Geneva to see at first hand the working of the Central Agency for Information. Meanwhile it was arranged for notifications to be cabled to the Prime Minister's Department in Wellington

The first of these cables was sent on 10 September 1941.

as well as to Cairo, and for the lists of New Zealand missing to be immediately sent to the International Red Cross Committee. In October, to discourage next-of-kin from continuing to spend money on cables to Geneva, the International Red Cross Committee was asked to hold replies to individual inquiries for sixty hours to give time for an official government notification to reach the inquirer's address. By the end of the year, most of the prisoners having arrived at permanent camps in Germany, their names had been notified and the current difficulty was largely solved.

V: Relief Work

The miserable position of prisoners at the transit camps in Greece and Crete could have been immeasurably improved if sufficient Red Cross food supplies had been on hand. The generosity of the Greek Red Cross, assisted by grants of money from the International Red Cross Committee's delegate in Athens,

£5000 was sent by the British Red Cross to the IRCC delegate, Dr. Brunel, to be spent on supplementary food. Milk, fruit, and other provisions were supplied.

did much to relieve the immediate wants of the sick in transit hospitals and sick-bays. But this source alone could not be expected to supply adequately the thousands of Allied soldiers who filled the camps, and an attempt was made through the International Red Cross delegation at Ankara to have food shipped from Turkey.

The first shipload, consisting of 70 tons of food parcels and clothing, left Turkey about mid-October 1941. £10,000 was sent by the British Red Cross to the IRCC delegate at Ankara for the purpose.

Then, in early August, rail communication was re-established with Switzerland, enabling four wagons of British Red Cross food parcels to go through to Athens. Although some were distributed at the transit camp and the hospitals in and near the capital, by the time the remainder of this consignment and the first shipload of Turkish food could be got to other camps, most of the prisoners had been moved to Germany.

Although it seemed a long time to hungry prisoners, there was a delay of only a few weeks before relief supplies of food parcels arrived at the new British camps in Germany and Austria. Sometimes there was considerable delay after their arrival in reaching agreement with the German camp authorities regarding distribution, for German ideas of control varied from camp to camp. Some camp commandants insisted on all tins being opened and their contents emptied into the prisoner's containers—usually a bowl and a mug—so that no tins, box, packing, or string should remain in the prisoner's possession. Others contented themselves with puncturing all tins, so that food could not be stored up for use in an escape. The German cut in the rations for prisoners of war in June 1941 served to emphasize the necessity for the regular supply to camps of these parcels. The end of the year saw the British Red Cross weekly output increased to 80,000 parcels, in addition to 22,500 supplied by Canada, 2500 of which were paid for by the New Zealand Joint Council from the National Patriotic Fund.

Canada's output reached 22,500 in October 1941. New Zealand's quota was increased to 4000 early in 1942. The cost was approximately 15s. each.

The amount of food available for distribution had also been increased by shiploads of bulk food from the British community in the Argentine, the first of which was sent to Lisbon in July 1941. All supplies from whatever source were checked into a bulk store in Geneva to form a common pool, which could be drawn upon by the International Red Cross Committee according to the demands of the various camps of both prisoners and civilian internees in Italy as well as Germany.

By the autumn of 1941 medical and invalid comforts (now standardised by the British Red Cross to a milk parcel and a special food parcel) were being distributed from Geneva in accordance with reports and requests received from camp and hospital medical officers. Besides building up an eight weeks' reserve at Geneva and a reserve in each camp and hospital, the plan was to send off weekly supplies on a fixed scale.

Invalid comforts were sent on a scale of 50 parcels to a thousand men in a camp, and 17 for each 50 beds in a hospital. Each of these groups also received one unit of medical supplies.

Braille appliances and training material were sent for the blind; hearing aids for the deaf, many of whom were elderly civilian internees; and dental materials according to the requests of captured dental officers. British doctors and dentists had to rely to a very great extent on these supplies received through Geneva from the British Red Cross.

With the large increase in the number of New Zealand prisoners resulting from the campaigns in Greece and Crete, it was obvious that some of the services undertaken for New Zealanders by the British Red Cross would soon entail a very considerable extra volume of work. It was obvious also that the bulk of it should be shouldered by some New Zealand organisation. But although there was in London a representative of the New Zealand Joint Council, Colonel B. Myers, he had no staff for dealing with the administrative task involved. Accordingly a special Prisoners of War Section of the High Commissioner's Office was set up under Mr. C. B. Burdekin to expand the work which had already begun in arranging for the sending of a small number of ‘personal parcels’ and packages of tobacco. Colonel Myers continued to act in an advisory capacity. In July the section begun to handle all inquiries sent to the British Red Cross concerning New Zealanders.

To answer similar inquiries in New Zealand the Joint Council had in May already set up a Prisoners of War Inquiry Office, which was organised to give next-of-kin and friends additional information and advice concerning a prisoner's welfare after government notification of his capture had been received. Shortly after the middle of the year depots were set up at the four main centres for censoring and repacking quarterly next-of-kin parcels, following the methods used by the British Red Cross in conjunction with the censorship authorities in England, and the first batch left New Zealand towards the end of September.

Meanwhile, owing to the extra time a prisoner would have to wait for his first parcel if it were sent from New Zealand, it had been arranged for the Prisoners of War Section of the High Commissioner's Office in London to pack and send an initial parcel. Moreover, since it often was some time before a prisoner's permanent camp address was known, and as the International Red Cross Committee was unable to undertake the enormous task of redirection, it was arranged that parcels from New Zealand should be sent to the section in London for this purpose. To accommodate the large volume of parcels which would have to be handled,

The number of parcels handled rose from seven in December 1940 to 801 in October 1941.

extra premises were secured in Charing Cross Road. The Prisoners of War Section in London continued to arrange for monthly supplies of tobacco and cigarettes to be sent to each New Zealand prisoner, in addition to those already being sent in bulk through Geneva. It was felt that the needs for all British Commonwealth prisoners in books, games, music, sport, gardening, and education were being adequately catered for on a camp basis by the British Red Cross.

* * * * *

While the general behaviour of the German medical corps towards prisoners in Greece and Crete was entirely humane, the same cannot be said of the treatment meted out either by some of their paratroops under the stress of battle or by some of those who took over the control of transit camps. The starvation which led to beriberi at Salonika, the beatings and other ill-treatment during transport to Germany, the indiscriminate shootings on Crete, are all examples of that ruthless subordination of humanity to expediency, of means to ends, with which the Nazi leaders succeeded in infecting a good number of their subordinate commanders.

The increasingly overt hostility of the United States, confirmed by the mid-Atlantic meeting of Churchill and Roosevelt in August 1941, and the surprise of the Russian counter-offensive in September dispelled the German optimism of the summer, based on hopes of a quick victory in the East and a new onslaught in the West before America was ready. By late autumn the German leaders knew that they were launched on a long and exhausting struggle. While committed to being korrekt in their observance of the Geneva Convention,

Hitler made a pronouncement to this effect in 1939.

it became the policy of the Nazi Government to use their prisoners to the utmost and to make them as little of a drain on the national economy as possible. As many as could be used were pushed out into farm work, coalmining, factory work, and any unskilled tasks that would free Germans for a more active part in the war effort. On the other hand, to conserve Germany's national resources, expenditure of materials for prisoner-of-war accommodation was kept as low as possible; lighting, heating, and feeding were reduced to the lowest possible scale, and their canteens were so depleted as to be little more than tokens. Some attempts were made to employ prisoners on military work, but the vigilance of British camp leaders and the action of visiting neutral inspectors forced such projects to be abandoned. Under pressure of this kind many of the worse defects of the prisoner-of-war camps were remedied. On occasion, however, the Germans were prepared to completely ignore the Convention, as their demand for a numerically equal exchange at Dieppe and their reprisals on the British officers sent to Poland clearly showed. Indeed, considering the Nazi Government's record of cynical disregard for pacts and treaties, it is remarkable that the Prisoners of War Convention survived the first three years of the war, when Germany held so many of our men prisoners and we held so few of hers.

Used to an iron discipline which repressed the slightest deviation from an order once given, the average German prisoner-of-war camp guard failed to understand how British soldiers could question the orders of his superiors. Still less could he understand how prisoners could want to disobey camp orders by trying to escape. However, seeing that the British prisoners were incorrigible in the matter, security measures must be enforced to prevent them: locking up the barracks at night, restricting the issue of clothing so that none could be used for making civilian clothes, meticulous examination of all parcels arriving by post. Although it took the German authorities some time to realise that an uncomfortable camp and harsh discipline often provided the incentive to escape, propaganda to convert the prisoner to the German way of thinking was thought worth while from the start. We find anti-Semitic pamphlets distributed at Stalag IXC, and others at Dulag Luft on atrocities committed by the Poles. For general distribution to camps there was a small four-page newspaper in English—The Camp—which in the autumn of 1941 was pointing out to its as yet ‘unenlightened’ British readers the solidarity of Germany and Italy and the exploitation of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ by ‘world Jewry’.

Further details of this paper and its method and contents are given in later chapters.

Over the camp radio loudspeakers came the voice of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ expatiating on British losses and difficulties in England. Camp leaders took a firm line in combating such propaganda, and so effectively did they build up a resistance to these German advances that both printed and broadcast propaganda became for the vast majority of British prisoners matter for derision, often lifting morale rather than lowering it.

Those who passed through Greece and Crete had been cheered by the fearlessness of most of the inhabitants, their sterling loyalty to the Allied cause, and their generous help to British prisoners, often in defiance of German disapproval. Yet it is hard for men to remain cheerful when they know they are rapidly losing weight, and when their bodily craving for nourishment keeps them thinking constantly of the next miserable meal. No other single factor seems to have restored morale so much as the issue of Red Cross food. Some prisoners of war, like the man who wrote in his diary for June 1941 that he could not agree with his friend's prediction that they would be ‘home by Christmas’ but that Christmas 1942 would be a reasonable hope, seem now to have been touchingly optimistic. But for most people in the heart of an enemy country during a war, cut off from the world by barbed wire and a double censorship, a realistic viewpoint is neither easy nor satisfying. For non-working prisoners, unless they were engaged on some camp duty or escape work (and not everybody could be), the days could become just ‘plain boring’. And the mood of many in this situation varied between acute depression and wild optimism, according to the food supply, a favourable turn to the war, or news from home.

The losses in prisoners of the New Zealand Division in the period from April to June 1941 gave rise in the Dominion to a widespread interest in the position of captured servicemen, and brought the authorities face to face with the problem of organising help for them on a large scale. In leading next-of-kin through the maze of labels, coupons, and lists of prohibited articles which had to be tackled each time a personal parcel was sent, and in generally interpreting the prisoner-of-war situation to relatives, the Joint Council Inquiry Office and its local branches served a most useful purpose. The decision to pack and send food parcels for prisoners gave New Zealand the opportunity to make her most appropriate contribution to the pool of relief supplies now coming from British communities in various parts of the world. The welfare of British prisoners and the custody of enemy prisoners had both become problems for the whole Commonwealth, a fact of which the practical outcome was the setting up in London of the Imperial Prisoners of War Committee. For the rest of the war its two sub-committees of British and Dominion representatives were responsible for settling the vast number of administrative problems relating to British Commonwealth prisoners of war.

CHAPTER 4 The Second Libyan Campaign and After (November 1941 – June 1942)

I: The Desert Campaign of 1941—Prisoners in Italian Hands

LESS than six months after the end of the campaign in Crete the British Western Desert Force, now the Eighth Army, again took the initiative in North Africa. As part of this force the New Zealand Division, reformed and re-equipped, crossed the border into Libya on 19 November ready to play a full part for the first time in desert warfare. The initial successes of the campaign in eastern Cyrenaica could not be exploited because of the unfavourable outcome of the great tank battle around the Sidi Rezegh area. The plan to destroy the enemy armour failed, and British losses in tanks and guns left some of our detached forces a prey to enemy armoured columns. Whereas the Greece and Crete campaigns had culminated in fairly controlled withdrawals from stubbornly defended positions, the Libyan campaign of November 1941 developed into a bewildering alternation of attack and defence with a possible front on every point of the compass.

The result was a complicated tangle of captures, escapes, recaptures, and liberations. General von Ravenstein, commanding part of Rommel's armour, fell into the hands of three of 21 NZ Battalion's Intelligence Section near Point 175. The headquarters of 5 NZ Brigade Group, isolated on an airfield near Bardia, was swept up by Rommel's mobile column. Captured Italian prisoners were liberated when German tanks surrounded their captors. A thousand-odd British prisoners were freed when Bardia was retaken. So difficult was it to tell whether a column of vehicles was British or enemy, that newly-captured prisoners were sometimes able to drive away in enemy trucks and make their way back to our lines.

Most of the New Zealanders captured were infantry and supporting elements whose positions had been overrun by German tanks. An infantryman's diary of events at Sidi Rezegh on 30 November tells a typical story of capture in the desert:

I look again through the loop-hole on my side and I can scarcely believe my eyes. The sun has set and through the moonlit dusk two hundred yards in front of me scores of men from all directions are walking in among the German tanks, their hands raised above their heads…. A minute or two and tanks are rumbling through and in our lines, men rising from their possies and surrendering….

A warrant officer of the same battalion mentions that the attached artillery was out of shells and that the supply line was cut; an attached machine-gunner states simply that ‘both machine-guns were silenced’. Such a situation made resistance to a tank attack hopeless, and indeed suicidal.

With appropriate alterations in time and place, this is in general the story of most of the other groups of army prisoners taken in the campaign of November 1941. The overrunning of the headquarters and attached troops of 5 Brigade by a tank column from Bardia on 27 November has already been mentioned; an already weakened 21 Battalion met a similar fate at Point 175 on the 29th; 24 and 26 Battalions were cut to pieces at Sidi Rezegh on the 30th; and on 1 December a German armoured attack on Belhamed practically destroyed 20 Battalion. Almost the entire medical services of the Division, grouped together and left unprotected south of Zaafran, had fallen into enemy hands on 28 November. Our assumption that, in view of their protection by the Geneva Convention, medical personnel would not be taken prisoner did not prevent many of them being transported back to the Axis base areas and later to Italy. The German armour had reaped a good harvest among the widely spread units of the Division. Less than a fortnight after the three brigade groups had crossed the Libyan border, 2578 of their number were killed or wounded and another 2042 were prisoners in the transit camps or hospitals of Bardia, Derna, and Benghazi. The remnants of 4 and 6 Brigades made their way back to Egypt, and three battalions of the 5th remained in the field with an improvised headquarters.

After a brief search for arms, most prisoners were almost immediately herded back along the enemy's line of communication. Some had only a short distance to go, others a march of four hours before they reached trucks to take them on to a staging compound in the enemy rear areas. Both on the march and in enemy transport it was sometimes the misfortune of prisoners to be bombed and machine-gunned by our own planes. At the staging compounds they were usually handed over to Italian line-of-communication troops, often with expressions of regret from the escorting guards of the Afrika Korps. The majority of these makeshift ‘cages’ were just wired-in pieces of open desert, on which prisoners had to spend a cold night, with a blanket among three or more and little or no food and water, before going on next day. Some parties were made by the Germans to work temporarily at supply dumps, but while there they seem to have been treated generously with food and cigarettes. The German front-line soldiers appear to have been instructed against looting from prisoners, for they were in general scrupulous in avoiding it; but it is clear that no such scruples weighed with many of the Italian guards.

Although only a few of those taken seem to have undergone interrogation, there were some Italian and German interrogators (mainly the latter) at the staging camps. The Italians collected large quantities of photographs and personal papers for examination. The German methods ranged from getting into casual conversation in the prison compound to shouting and screaming and threatening with a revolver (fired over the prisoner's head or near his feet), or even with a machine gun. Almost every soldier had had it impressed upon his memory that if captured, no matter what he was asked, he must give only his name, rank, and number; that the German interrogators had to resort to methods of intimidation indicates that few of our men gave away information.

Although few official instructions on what to do in the event of capture were given out in the Greece and Crete campaigns, the matter was not neglected in the preparations for the desert campaign of 1941. An instruction from GHQ Middle East had been passed on to almost every man, and maps of enemy countries and other escape aids had been distributed on as wide a scale as possible. The instructions emphasized the warning concerning name, rank, and number mentioned above, and the importance of trying to escape. Lack of cover in the desert made the initial concealment necessary for an escape very difficult; and this, combined with heat, lack of water, and heavy going underfoot made a long journey back to our lines a tremendous feat of physical endurance. Some succeeded in evading capture, like the machine-gunner at Sidi Rezegh on 30 November who feigned death and crawled away in the darkness to reach our lines the same night, but many others who tried lying low in a similar way were discovered.

The capture on 28 November of the New Zealand medical centre containing a thousand of our wounded and the majority of the medical personnel of the Division was a serious blow. It prevented our evacuating any more of our casualties, and meant that unless the dressing stations were recaptured the lightly wounded combatant troops would be taken west by the enemy as prisoners of war. The medical personnel were at first thought to be exempt from this treatment, but at midday on 2 December some 200 of them were taken off by the Italians on the pretence of forming a base hospital in the back areas.

A Note from the British Government to the Italian Government on 11 September 1941 had given Italy the right to retain British medical personnel and chaplains if they were needed to attend to British prisoners.

Realising that the same might happen at any time to the rest of the occupants of the centre, a party of 31 lightly wounded and medical personnel made a successful break-out by truck that night; another party of 20 did the same at midday on 4 December. Both parties reached Allied lines safely.

The first party (2 December) was under the command of Lt-Col G. Dittmer, CO 28 (Maori) Battalion, and the second party under Lt-Col Kippenberger, CO 20 Battalion.

The evacuation by truck of prisoners taken in the area near Tobruk followed the main coastal road through Derna and Barce to the main transit camp at Benghazi. This journey took two days or considerably longer according to the transport available and the time spent at one or other of the many staging places along the route. Most of these were wired enclosures in open ground of the type already described, sometimes equipped with Italian bivouac tents for shelter, primitive sanitation, and a little bedding. Rather heavy rain during this period made most of these temporary camping grounds quagmires, thus completing the discomfort occasioned by cold nights with very little bed covering. By way of contrast Derna was pleasantly situated, had tidy rows of big square tents with plaited mat floors and an ample water supply, and seems to have been properly organised beforehand. At all these staging camps there were hard rations of tinned meat and biscuits.

Prisoners taken in the Bardia-Sollum area were marched or transported into Bardia. Here the accommodation consisted for other ranks of a stony compound near the coast, enclosed by a wall but practically devoid of other shelter, and for officers an adjacent barn-like shed with a fenced-in area for exercise. The nights were cold and sometimes wet as well, and as many as six other ranks slept together to spin out their blankets and to keep each other warm. In the weeks that followed they rigged up primitive shelters with old blankets, stones, and pieces of corrugated iron. Proper sanitary arrangements were non-existent and dysentery cases soon made their appearance. Water had to be brought to the compound in barrels: fresh water for drinking but only sea water for washing. Food—coffee, macaroni or rice, bread or biscuits—was of quite good quality, but only enough to keep men alive, and ‘not enough body in it to give [them] … much strength’. After a week a large party of the more senior officers, including Brigadier Hargest,

Brig J. Hargest, CBE, DSO and bar, MC, m.i.d.; Member of Parliament for Invercargill 1931–35, Awarua 1935–44; born Gore, 4 Sep 1891; farmer; served 1 NZEF 1914–20, commanded 2 Bn Otago Regt, 1918; comd 5 NZ Inf Bde May 1940-Nov 1941; p.w. 27 Nov 1941; escaped Mar 1943; killed in action, France, 12 Aug 1944.

was moved away at night to Benghazi on a submarine which had just arrived with fresh water and petrol. The other officers followed soon after in other submarines but went direct to Italy. Although the evacuation of small parties by submarine went on almost until the town was recaptured, and 60-odd sick went off in a German hospital ship, a thousand men finally remained to be liberated. They passed the month of December in acute discomfort and suspense, sharing with the beleaguered garrison the short commons, the Allied bombs, and the uncertainty whether or not they would be evacuated.

The main enemy collecting centre at Sidi Hussein outside Benghazi had been in use for some time. Airmen shot down in Libya and troops captured during or since the enemy counter-thrust to the Egyptian border in April made up a total of several hundreds by September 1941. At that date the camp was suddenly cleared. A small number remained in North Africa as a working party for the Germans, but most were taken by truck to Tarhuna, near Tripoli, whence after a short stay in military barracks they were shipped to Italy. When in November 1941, as a result of the British offensive, unexpected thousands of British troops fell into enemy hands, the German policy of speedy evacuation by truck to the rear soon filled Benghazi transit camp to overflowing. By 5 December it held behind barbed wire some 6000 British Commonwealth troops—Australians, Indians, New Zealanders, South Africans (including negroes), and men from the United Kingdom. The facilities were quite inadequate for such numbers, and improvements were neglected, seemingly in the hope that the prisoners would quickly move on to Italy.

The main compound, a large area of sandy ground, contained several barracks and sheds for motor transport; an overflow compound alongside it contained only Italian groundsheet bivouac tents. Over 700 had to jam into each draughty, unlighted shed at night, the majority sleeping on the concrete floor after the few camp beds were occupied. The lack of bedding is typified by three men who shared a blanket, a greatcoat, and a groundsheet; many had still less. In the daytime the men milled about in the space between the barrack huts. There were long queues for the few small taps; beards grew for lack of shaving facilities, and most men, unable to wash properly, had not had their clothes off since going into action two or three weeks before. The long trenches serving as latrines soon became cesspools and clouds of flies spread dysentery.

A dreary diet of half a pound of bread, a little macaroni soup, and a little tinned meat was issued daily through the camp staff of South Africans appointed by the Italian commandant. By mid-December men were experiencing the ‘blackouts’ through lack of nourishment which have already been noticed in the transit camps of Greece and Crete; and many had adopted a policy of lying down as much as possible to conserve their strength. An occasional issue of a lemon and a few cigarettes did little to alleviate the situation. Tempers began to fray under the boring routine of waiting all day to queue up with an empty meat-tin for the next meagre issue of food. Both with each other and with the Italian troops, some men traded for food at fantastic prices such of their valuables as had survived various searches: wristlet watches, rings, or fountain pens for small quantities of cigarettes or loaves of bread. Besides the all-important topic of food, thoughts and conversation turned on the possibility of rescue by our advancing forces and the alternative of transportation to Italy. Rumours of the British advance and the nightly sound of bombs on Benghazi helped to maintain morale, which to judge by the enthusiastic evening sing-songs seems to have been high in spite of the conditions. Almost every night men got out from the compound, planning to hide up and wait for Allied liberation, but most of them were recaptured.

In early December a first draft of 2000-odd had marched down to the docks, bound, as the guards enthusiastically put it, for ‘bella Italia’—an aesthetic rapture which brought little response among the prisoners. They sailed from Benghazi packed in the holds of a merchant ship, and in the next few days several smaller drafts followed. By the 20th the camp still held some 1500 prisoners, but had been cleared of almost everything else, in anticipation of the arrival of British forces. Hopes of liberation ran high among the prisoners. When no rations were forthcoming the camp store was ransacked for what it would yield. A false march down to the docks and back to camp heightened the prisoners' suspense and made it look as if this last evacuation would indeed prove impossible. But next day they were marched off and packed into the holds of a German cargo ship, which left for Tripoli the same night.

A few prisoners made last-minute escapes from the line of march to the docks, diving up alleyways or dodging inside ruined buildings. One New Zealander

Sgt P. A. McConchie (20 Bn).

hid in a cement heap and finally emerged with cement bags over his head and legs, to stroll easily out of the town as an Arab. Senussi fed and concealed him five miles out until it was safe to return. Another

Sgt C. C. McDonald (20 Bn).

simply hid with two companions in a ruined hotel, where they carefully rationed out their remaining food and lay low. They had only to wait in hiding for three days, for on Christmas Eve British armoured cars were in the town, and that night they had a celebration dinner with their rescuers.

The party of 1500 from Benghazi reached Tripoli on 23 December. A train was ready to take them to a temporary camp at Garian and they were packed into goods-trucks, in which, the engine having broken down, they spent a miserable night huddled together for warmth. The next day they completed their journey with an exhausting 14-kilometre march into the hills, in the course of which fatigue, sickness, and lack of food caused many to fall out by the side of the steep hill road. That night they were housed in old Italian concrete barracks and given hard rations and a blanket. And here they spent a cold and unpleasant three days in spite of a small tot of cognac, cigarettes, and additional food on Christmas Day. The year's end saw them packed into the cold iron holds of the same freighter, bound for Italy ‘and exile’, as one man puts it in his diary. A foul three-day trip amid the reek of seasickness and dysentery brought them to Naples. After intolerable muddling and delay came the relief of getting ashore and the joy of a hot shower while clothes were being disinfested. They were the last of this large haul of prisoners from North Africa to pass through Naples.

Statements by eye-witnesses, both medical and combatant, indicate that the treatment of our wounded on the battlefield by the Germans was as good as conditions allowed. In the Italian field hospital at Bardia there seems to have been no discrimination between patients of whatever nationality, though general overcrowding lowered the standard of care. The Italian nursing nuns in the Torelli hospital at Benghazi made up in kindness to prisoner patients what was lacking in medical treatment and hospital equipment. Many of the patients in the hospital were liberated when Benghazi was recaptured.

Apart from the few who were transported from Bardia by submarine, the bulk of the prisoners from North Africa had left Benghazi or Tripoli direct for Italy in Axis cargo or passenger vessels or in Italian warships. Crammed into the holds and battened down at nights, they had been rushed across the Mediterranean and were just as relieved as the Italian guards and crew to reach Taranto or Brindisi in safety, though many prisoners had vaguely nursed wild hopes of a dramatic naval rescue during the crossing. One of the ships paid an unexpected call to Crete, where a party of 250-odd spent a week or so at the then comparatively empty Galatas camp before going on to Taranto.

On 8 December a large draft of 2100 had left on the Jantzen, an 8000-ton cargo vessel, with rations sufficient for the 36-hour dash across to Italy. In the middle of the next afternoon, just off Cape Methoni, near Pilos on the south-west coast of the Greek Peloponnese, she was struck by a torpedo in one of the forward holds. Five hundred or more of the prisoners packed there were killed, and the hatchboards falling in with men lying on them killed others as they crashed below. As soon as they had recovered from the shock of the explosion, men rushed to the decks up ropes or still usable ladders. The rugged coastline of Greece could be seen a mile or two away with heavy seas breaking on it, lashed by a bitterly cold wind.

The Italian captain and crew had taken themselves off in two of the three lifeboats, the other having capsized in launching, and some of the men jumped overboard in an attempt to swim to the shore. Nine New Zealanders reached one of the boats, which eventually made a nearby uninhabited island where they spent the night, and they were taken over to the mainland next day. Fifteen got away on a raft they had managed to launch, but more than half of these died of exposure. Meanwhile a German naval engineer had taken control of the ship, explaining to those on board that the engines would still go and that there was a good chance of reaching safety. He ordered everybody aft in order to keep the weight off the damaged bow and organised rescue parties to bring up to the officers' quarters the injured from the lower decks. Although the wind and sea were still strong, the ship was brought in stern first and beached about 5 p.m. broadside on to an open piece of coast. In spite of the bitter cold many now swam the remaining fifty yards to the shore, and when darkness fell many others made their way to safety along ropes secured to the rocks. Next day dawned fine, and those still on board came off in the remaining lifeboat or on stretchers slung to the ropes. A check made later showed that a little over two-thirds of the British prisoners had survived, the remainder (including 44 New Zealanders) having perished either in the explosion or in the events which followed.

The survivors, many of whom had lost clothes and boots, spent a wretched winter in primitive and ill-provided transit camps on the Peloponnese, now under Italian control. They lived successively in empty buildings near the scene of the wreck, in the cells of an old Turkish fort at Pilos, and in Italian bivouac tents erected in a small area at Akhaia, on the route to Patras. The last became known to the prisoners as ‘Dysentery Acre’, on account of the prevalence of the disease among them at the camp and the thick mud resulting from persistent rain and snow. Food consisted of the normal kind of Italian army rations, though the quantity was insufficient in cold weather to satisfy the needs of men who had been on limited rations for some time. The nearest water supply was the pump of a Greek household several fields away. After a fortnight the Italians issued boots and greatcoats for those without them. Much sickness (some of it fatal), the squalid living conditions, and a good deal of unnecessary regimentation by Italian officers left an indelible imprint on the memories of those who endured the short stay at this ‘camp’.

At the end of December the prisoners were taken north to Patras. Here they lived in the old, verminous concrete huts of a transit camp near the shore, formerly used by the Greeks for Italian prisoners. After a month the Italian guard, whose almost sole consideration was to prevent anyone escaping, allowed the prisoners out of the huts for a set time each day. Two New Zealanders who tried to escape received a brutal beating up and a spell in a civilian jail in chains. During February the camp was cleared in small drafts to Italy, the men travelling on Italian transports under the most favourable conditions they had yet encountered during captivity.

Most of the early shiploads of prisoners from North Africa had disembarked at Naples and, after disinfestation there, had been taken to the prisoner-of-war camp at Capua. Later shiploads had disembarked at Brindisi and gone to a transit camp at Tuturano, some miles inland; others had disembarked at Taranto or Bari, to be accommodated at a camp on the outskirts of the latter. And so at the beginning of 1942 almost all the able-bodied New Zealanders taken in the Second Libyan Campaign found themselves in prison camps in southern Italy. Some of the senior officers had gone to Sulmona (Campo PG 78)

Campo (or Campo PG) is short for Campo concentramento di prigioneri di guerra, permanent camp. The camps were originally known by their place names, and numbers were not introduced until early 1942.

and the sick and wounded were in hospitals in Caserta and Bari. The bulk of the prisoners, however, were in Campo PG 66

Campo disinfestazione e smistamento, quarantine camp.

at Capua, in Campo PG 85 at Tuturano, or in Campo PG 75 at Bari, each of them near a port with a disinfesting plant. They were all temporary camps intended for holding prisoners until ‘disinfestation and sorting’ had been carried out. But it is doubtful whether either process ever reached finality in any of them, and a ‘temporary’ stay might sometimes extend to several months.

Campo PG 66, on a flat stretch of ground on the outskirts of Capua, had been in use as a prisoner-of-war camp since early 1941, when a medical officer reported favourably on its food, water supply and sanitation, and the men stated that they were being ‘well taken care of.’ Though overcrowding at the end of 1941 stultified such amenities as were provided, conditions were an improvement for most prisoners. Other ranks lived 18 to a tent (made of Italian groundsheets), slept on duck-boards with straw palliasses and two Italian blankets each, and had regular though not always sufficient rations. An area of about five acres gave adequate space for exercise, though the continued wet winter weather converted it into a quagmire. Hot showers and barbers were available, and an issue of clothing, though poor in quality, satisfied an urgent need.

It consisted of cotton underpants, cotton shirt, belt, cap, handkerchief, and two squares of calico in place of socks.

The whole set-up was comparative luxury after the rigours of being herded about North Africa; an eye-witness records that those who had been longest in transit appeared much more pinched and weary than the others.

Soon after their arrival most parties of prisoners had the experience of their first Red Cross food parcel since capture. ‘What a scene! … We cheered, clapped one another on the back, and went temporarily crackers….’

From a diary kept by a New Zealand private at Campo PG 66.

There was a canteen, too, which in return for camp pay chits sold fruit, cigarettes, and other small goods but was quite inadequate in size for a camp of 2000-odd. And as in most camps which had not had time to become fully organised, there were muddles and anomalies in issues and enormous queues whether for rations, canteen goods, or Italian clothing. When Red Cross supplies ran out, food again became the prime preoccupation of men's minds, and the more obsessed haunted the rubbish heaps for cabbage leaves and other scraps which they could carry off and boil up. Men passed the time between meals reading whatever printed matter they had in their pockets, writing letter-cards home, and swopping stories of their capture and subsequent experiences, especially when an occasional issue of wine warmed the blood and loosened the tongue.

Many made their first acquaintance with one of the more annoying features of prison-camp routine—counting the prisoners. This sounds a simple procedure, but to arrive at an accurate total for hundreds of uncooperative prisoners—or a total which would at any rate tally with the records—often took several counts and much time, to the exasperation of prisoners as well as of guards. One man's diary contains the entry: ‘Got checked and checked and checked till we nearly went screwy….’ Even when prisoners had not planned to upset the count by double-covering

A system by which, on a roll-call parade, a rear rank one (or even two) less in number than a front rank could be made to appear to be covering the latter man for man. It usually involved slight sideways movements by rear rank men during the count.

and other ruses, accuracy and speed of counting among prison-camp guards were rare qualities. At Capua there were three counts a day, each of which went on in all weathers until the counters were satisfied. The cold and wet of January 1942 made particularly trying the long hours spent by prisoners standing in the mud covered off in threes while an Italian passed slowly along intoning the foreign numerals. Then followed further delay while the counting staff met to grapple with the arithmetical problems involved in reaching a final result. Towards the end of the month the numbers were decreased as trainloads of prisoners were sent north, and by early February most of the New Zealanders had been transferred to Campo PG 52 at Chiavari, or to Campo PG 57 at Gruppignano.

Many transports from North Africa went to Brindisi or Taranto, and prisoners who disembarked at these ports, after going through a disinfesting centre, were taken to the camp at Tuturano. Accommodation here was totally inadequate. Whereas the officer prisoners were housed in wooden huts, other ranks were herded into an adjacent piece of ground turned by rain and the tramping of a thousand men into a sea of mud, on which they had to erect Italian bivouac tents.

These consisted of Italian groundsheets buttoned together.

Officer prisoners were given a camp bed each; other ranks received a heap of straw and two fibre blankets. There was a concrete washing place and latrine in the officers' compound; the whole of the other ranks had to manage with two small tubs for ablutions and a trench three feet deep for a latrine. Though the air was bracing, wet weather culminating in snow and the prevalence of intestinal disorders helped to make living conditions trying. Nevertheless, as one medical officer put it, the ‘morale of [the] men seemed to thrive on it’. The British senior warrant officer maintained a smartness and discipline which was an obvious contrast to the comportment of the camp guards; and the Australian bugler who added a patriotic tune to each call unbeknown to the Italians raised the spirits of the whole camp in a different way.

The food consisted of the Italian army ration of bread, macaroni or rice, and other staple items, with the addition of a little fresh fruit and vegetables for those ranks who could pay for the extras.

Officers received the pay of Italian officers of equivalent rank; other ranks received one lira a day.

Those with pay credits were also able to buy cigarettes, a few toilet necessities, some packs of cards, and Italian newspapers. There developed an alternating routine of card-playing and walking up and down to keep warm, with breaks for meals and periods in bed. A week before Christmas the English and South African officers were sent to permanent camps in the north, and in early January the New Zealand officers left for Campo PG 38 near Arezzo.

Other ranks were also sent off to permanent camps in the new year. At the same time the authorities' decision to build more wooden huts began to bear fruit, and these were under construction when the shipwrecked party arrived from Greece in March. Though they were housed in barracks, the ill-luck of this unfortunate group held. They arrived in time for a 60 per cent cut in prisoner-of- war rations on 13 March, and shortly afterwards they had an outbreak of meningitis which caused several deaths and kept them at Tuturano in quarantine until May. There were instances during this period of prisoners being tied to trees as punishment for attempted escape or disobedience of Italian orders. On the other hand, from the Italian civilian population there were many examples of friendly behaviour, including surreptitious gifts of food. The issue in April of the first Red Cross food parcel produced, as might be expected, a tremendous effect.

All were like children on a Christmas morn eager to see what each parcel contained … [that night] sleep was out of the question. The camp was one continued buzz from end to end with chaps conversing on the sole topic—the parcels.

From a diary kept by a New Zealand soldier—one of the shipwrecked party.

In early May some Indians were sent out on the first working party, and a few days later the majority left for Campo PG 65 at Gravina, where further working parties were planned.

The first inrush from North Africa had soon filled Tuturano, and some smaller drafts arriving at Brindisi or Taranto were sent to a similar camp on the outskirts of Bari. This also was a ‘temporary’ camp, though some prisoners remained in it for four months or more. Here also the few wooden huts were allotted to officers, and other ranks were put into a bare field with bivouac tents and a heap of straw. Representations were made to the Italian authorities to have these men brought under cover in view of their small numbers (about sixty), but this was not permitted until snow was lying on the ground. The small, flimsy wooden huts, entirely without heating, were grossly overcrowded and the exercise area very cramped. Indeed, the whole compound measured only one hundred yards by twenty, and it was only after many weeks that an outside walk once a week was allowed. Food was on the Italian army scales applying in most camps,

Italian ration scales for prisoners of war (grammes daily): OfficersOther Ranks (non-working)Other Ranks (working)Bread150200400Macaroni or rice6666120Fat101313Sugar161515Cheese (cooking)101010Cheese (table)when available3043Meat143434Tomato puree151515Egg(1 a month)....Peas and beans153030Coffee substitute777
Officers were sometimes able to buy green vegetables, small amounts of salted fish, fresh and dried fruit, wine and cakes; other ranks only occasionally. Estimated calorific values, based on a report by Lt-Col A. A. Tennent, NZMC, on repatriation in April 1942, for the three columns above, taking into account possible extras, are 780, 1081, and 1821.

but prisoners' accounts indicate that they were seldom able to obtain their full ration. Personal belongings were looted by the guards, especially on one occasion in March when a search followed the discovery of an escape tunnel. Some cases of striking prisoners and handcuffing with wire occurred. There were instances of wild shooting by sentries, probably due more to temperamental instability than to malice, but sufficiently dangerous to wound some of the prisoners. Appeals to authority proved of little use; both the camp commandant and the general commanding the military district were hostile. They not only condoned but encouraged ill-treatment, and both were later tried by War Crimes tribunals for a shooting incident in which a British officer was killed, the general being sentenced to death for his part in the affair.

Those transferred to other camps were not slow in reporting these matters and in early 1942 Bari had achieved sufficient notoriety to demand urgent investigation by a neutral observer.

No inspection was allowed until 13 May 1942, when a member of the Swiss Legation in Rome visited the camp.

The lot of prisoners, especially of officers, would have been considerably worse if it had not been for one or two of the junior Italian officers who were well-disposed towards the British. Through their efforts ‘canteen’ supplies came into the camp, including such things as dried fruits, jam and cakes. A senior medical officer estimated the value of the additional food bought in this way at an average of 500 calories a day for each officer. Besides food, the supply of toilet necessities, playing-cards, and Continental editions of authors in English did much to make life more tolerable and relieve the irritation of confinement in such a cramped space. The day passed mainly in domestic chores, card games and reading, with lecturettes in the evenings to give variety. After two or three months some issues of Red Cross food (although on a low scale) did much to restore flagging energies, which medical officers ascribed to a ‘decline in general health.’ Nobody was able to break out of the camp during this period, a first tunnel project in March having come to an abortive end. But the discovery of the tunnel probably hastened the transfer of prisoners, and no one in the parties which left for permanent camps or for repatriation was sorry to see the last of Bari.

In early January about forty New Zealand officers were moved from Bari and assembled with their fellow countrymen from Tuturano,

The numbers rose to about 90 officers (mostly New Zealanders) and 25 other ranks (mostly South Africans).

and a few English, South Africans and Rhodesians, at Campo PG 38 just outside the village of Poppi, in a rather remote part of the Arno valley. Accommodation consisted of a white, four-storied convent building—the Villa Ascensione—set picturesquely among cypresses high on the slope of a hill. In addition to being fenced around with barbed wire, it had been redecorated and fitted with showers and modern kitchen equipment. The furnishings included very comfortable beds and bedding and even bedside cupboards and carpets. The messroom gleamed with white table-cloths and new china and cutlery, and Italian sergeant interpreters were on hand to supervise the mess-waiters at meals. A courteous commandant greeted new arrivals as his guests; and it was clear that pains had been taken to provide a welcome and comfort suitable for British officers.

After a day or two it was also clear that this high standard of attention, with the best will in the world, could not be kept up. Moreover there were material defects beneath the façade of renovation. The fuel supply was inadequate for keeping the building warm, and the rations, though of good quality, were sufficient only to keep everyone perpetually hungry. It was difficult to get Red Cross and other supplies owing to the isolated situation of the camp, especially in winter when the only road to the village below was inaccessible to all but foot traffic. Critical news from the Far East and the bitter cold helped to cast a gloom over this period, though the obviously ridiculous claims and stories of heroism appearing in the Fascist press provided material for countering depression. There was, too, a strong sense of solidarity among the prisoners, no doubt helped by the initial decision of the senior British officer to let the camp be run as an officers' mess by a democratically elected committee, which had to answer for its actions at monthly meetings of the whole camp.

From the spring of 1942 onwards the supply of Red Cross food parcels, together with the extras that it was found could be bought in addition to the basic ration, provided everyone with an ample diet. Prisoners were able to supplement this with vegetables and fruit grown in the plots of the convent garden, which they were allowed to cultivate under the supervision of an Italian officer, who not only took a friendly interest but contributed seeds from his own agricultural estate. After some preliminary delay a canteen enabled prisoners to buy fruit, sweets, cigarettes, and wine (often at exorbitant prices), as well as toilet articles, shirts, pyjamas, and other items of clothing that were badly needed. In time, too, the purchase of plenty of books in English, and music and the hire of a piano gave increased scope for recreation and entertainment, which had hitherto been confined to card games, chess, lectures, and learning to read the Italian newspapers.

An attempted escape opened the eyes of the Italian camp staff to another side of their guests' make-up, but though more cautious they remained well-disposed. As the May sun brightened and warmed the beautiful Italian countryside, the ‘Villa’ became rather like an officers' rest camp, with the day spent reading in a deck-chair or sketching, or walking (with guards) in the surrounding hills or playing basketball and deck tennis, and the evening in sipping wine over cards, chess, or music. The carefree Italian atmosphere became infectious and time lost its meaning; for anything that could not be fitted into one day could always be left till the morrow. Domani è un altro giorno.

The New Zealand officers who went to Campo PG 35 about two months after the Poppi draft had a somewhat similar experience. A large medieval monastery building at Padula, in a beautiful valley south-east of Salerno in southern Italy, was converted into accommodation for officer prisoners, the first batch of whom went into residence on 22 March 1942. A high-ceilinged monks' refectory became the officers' mess and served also for entertainments, and there was a two-acre area in grass to provide a playing field, walking space and gardens.

After a preliminary period of food shortage, it was soon found that some members of the camp staff were willing to act as middle-men for the purchase of black-market goods. By May hams, poultry, cheese, eggs, and large amounts of condensed milk were being smuggled into the mess, to say nothing of private transactions. So that with the Red Cross food parcels which had arrived towards the end of April, the late spring became a period of plenty. Clothing could be ordered from a visiting tailor. The camp soon had a well-stocked library and the lectures and classes common to most camps. There was no difficulty in providing talent for a variety of good entertainment from the 400-odd officers and 140-odd other ranks to which the camp strength had risen by the middle of the year.

There were a few New Zealanders in other officers' camps—Montalbo, Sulmona, and Vincigliata. Campo PG 41 at Montalbo was a fourteenth-century castle near Piacenza, converted into a camp for British officers without losing the defects in heating, sanitation, and water supply which by modern standards such buildings possess. It had held British prisoners, together with a number of Greeks, since September 1941, and though extra purchases of food were possible, the Italian camp staff was hostile and amenities were only slowly developed. Campo PG 12, a castle-like villa at Vincigliata on a hill above Florence, housed all the captured British generals and brigadiers (including two New Zealanders

Brigadiers R. Miles and J. Hargest. They and one or two others were kept in a villa near Sulmona until transferred to Campo PG 12 in the spring of 1942.

) in quarters suitable to their rank. A close watch was kept on their activities in order to prevent the escape of such valuable prisoners. But they were allowed to keep hens, rabbits, and a vegetable garden, to indulge in hobbies, to have books and gramophone records, and to take daily walks under strong guard in the surrounding countryside.

Campo PG 78 at Sulmona has already been described in its earlier period, and a report by a medical officer repatriated in April 1942 confirmed that the ‘general conduct and appointments of the camp’ surpassed any other in Italy. Although during the first year of its existence camp security had tightened up, and although during the winter there was a shortage of fuel and of Red Cross food, the amenities for officers and NCOs remained comparable to those described at Poppi, except that the larger numbers at Sulmona gave more scope for entertainments.

1678 all ranks on 23 April 1942.

For other ranks the quarters had become overcrowded and lacked comfort, though they were compensated by additional rations. The ration cut in March caused most camps (even that of the generals) to depend for an adequate diet on the arrival of Red Cross food parcels. Sulmona was no exception, for there was little black-market food obtainable in the area, and for junior officers at all events the regular messing charge of 21 lire a day left too little in their pay accounts to buy at the enhanced prices.

This was the messing charge as in January 1942. The pay of a British second-lieutenant in Italian hands was 750 lire a month. After deducting a messing charge of 630 lire a month, this left 120 lire for all other purchases and incidental expenses.

The majority of the New Zealand other rank prisoners

Between 700 and 800. By mid-1942 there were about 950 out of a camp total of 2700, the remainder being mainly South Africans and United Kingdom troops.

were transferred in early February 1942 to a camp 16 kilometres from Chiavari in the hills north of the Italian Riviera, between Genoa and La Spezia. Campo PG 52 comprised an area of five acres in a valley among terraced and wooded hillsides, fenced in by barbed wire and containing some forty jerry-built huts of one or two stories,

A prisoner's diary describes the huts thus: ‘Some wooden, made from what we think were large packing-cases, and some pre-fabricated, type of Gibraltar board….’

some of which were found to leak and let in the cold winter air. Inside were two-decked wooden bunks, each with a straw palliasse, a pillow, three blankets and, to the surprise of the prisoners, two calico sheets. There was no heating in the huts and rather poor lighting, and the perforated pipes at the ablution stand provided trickles of water quite insufficient for washing as we know it, so that it was some time before body lice were eliminated. Nevertheless some found the conditions better than those at Capua. The commandant, an elderly Italian colonel, seems to have been fair and genuinely interested in the welfare of the prisoners in his charge. Internal administration of the camp was in the hands of the senior warrant officer, assisted by an office staff and other NCOs in subordinate positions.

Food supplied in the first period of the camp's existence was considered a great improvement on that at Capua. But satisfaction with the rations was shortlived, for the 60 per cent cut imposed in March brought back the food shortages, and a prisoner wrote resignedly that everyone was ‘constantly semi-hungry, but that [was] a permanent feature of prisoner-of-war life.’ Some Red Cross supplies had arrived in mid-February, but deliveries were irregular owing to the difficulty of access to the camp and to the shortage of Italian transport. There was evidence of considerable pilferage of parcel mail for prisoners. One man who kept a careful check received a total of three and a half food parcels in the period January to April 1942. This was insufficient to stop men thinking about food (if indeed many prisoners of war ever did stop), and there developed a craze for collecting and writing down recipes for tasty dishes which would be prepared and eaten when the collector was again in a position to procure the ingredients. A canteen was available to sell onions, dried fruit, some tobacco and wine, and fresh fruit in season, but the facilities were adequate for about 150 men only instead of the 3000 which the camp soon held; and the pay of one lira a day

1.25 lire for NCOs.

restricted what could be bought at the high prices ruling. Hunger, besides making men thinner and hollow-cheeked and weak enough to faint on occasions, also made them bad-tempered and suspicious of the staff of the cookhouse from which food was issued to each hut. An Easter Sunday diary entry indicates the state of irritability which sometimes prevailed:

Have been nearly crazy today for lack of something to do; if ever there was a lazier, more useless, hungry, and at times hopelessly boring life than that of a prisoner of war in a foreign country, I cannot imagine what or where it could be … waiting for our third and last check parade, then drearily to bed with hunger gnawing at our stomachs.

The urgent need for an occupation, for physical and mental activity during captivity, was soon realised. Working parties carrying shingle from the riverbed and doing other odd jobs about the camp once a week hardly provided sufficient opportunity to satisfy the needs of active young men. A committee was set up in February to organise entertainment, but with the lack of material it had to fall back on lectures, quiz sessions, euchre evenings, and improvised concerts. Lectures were given on subjects ranging from fox-hunting to diamond mining, and some men kept full notes of what they heard in exercise books bought at the canteen. Numbers of men experienced a return of religious fervour or perhaps turned to religion seriously for the first time in their lives, and a full programme of services was carried out. Classes and study groups (on farming for example) soon sprang up; and later, as books and materials were obtained, a small library, a drama society, and an art circle were formed. A useful art that flourished in Campo 52 was the making of a variety of articles by re-shaping used food-tins—‘tin-bashing’ as it came to be known; there and in other camps it kept some prisoners occupied and interested for the rest of their captivity. Many huts clubbed together and bought the Italian daily newspapers and Tempo or other illustrated journals, which though known to be full of propaganda helped men to maintain some touch with the world outside the wire. Camp and hut lotteries provided another interesting way of making use of the coupons issued in lieu of money. In time sufficient instruments were bought for an orchestra, and concerts were given in the large ‘mess-hut’, originally built for messing but far too small for the purpose and so used for recreation.

Walks outside the camp under guard were started in March, and many men derived pleasure and inward solace from the beautiful north Italian landscape in spring flower and from the friendliness of the civilians they encountered. One man writes, after the long dreary winter months, of calm starlit evenings with fireflies showing their fascinating lights, and the nightingale's lonely song. Another, seeing a lovely Italian girl through the wire, recalls how long it is since he spoke to a woman. The arrival of New Zealand mail in April brought back a sense of reality and gave our men a new incentive to fill up and send off the cards and letter-forms issued to them. On Anzac Day a service and march past made many remember past occasions and reawakened in them a feeling of corporate and national pride that they could still turn on a smart parade if necessary.

A break out had been attempted as early as February, but the would-be escapers were caught and punished, together with the hut commanders, by a short period of solitary confinement. Though discipline was easy and punishments on the whole light, an erratic outburst was always liable to occur, and one day two prisoners were flogged for ‘insolence’ by the Carabinieri

Carabinieri reali, royal guard—a type of Italian police. Each of the larger prisoner-of-war camps had carabinieri attached for security purposes—searching, investigating escapes, and keeping a check on the other Italian guards.

attached to the camp. A party of New Zealanders worked during the winter on an escape tunnel, but in mid-June, when it was almost ready for use, it was discovered.

A number of New Zealanders went straight from Capua to Campo PG 57 at Gruppignano, near Udine in north-east Italy, which had at first held mainly Australians. The camp stood on the flat ground of a river plain surrounded by the distant, snow-capped Dolomites—a large area enclosed by barbed wire and planned for division into compounds as expansion took place. For administrative purposes, accommodation, and food the camp was organised at this period into two compounds, each with its own cookhouse and orderly room serving about 800 men. An Italian colonel of carabinieri, a stern disciplinarian with dictatorial methods, controlled the camp. Though it was run more efficiently than many other Italian camps, pinpricking regulations and some brutal punishments

Besides numerous handcuffings and long and rigorous treatment in the camp cells, two New Zealanders were shot dead and two were wounded in this camp.

made it clear that this was not due to feelings of humanity or goodwill.

Double-walled wooden huts about 80 feet long on concrete foundations held two-tier wooden bunks in batches of eight. Only enough fuel for three to four hours' heating each night was available, and one double and one single blanket was a meagre enough allowance to combat the winter wind off the mountains. A recreation hut had been in use up till the end of 1941, but the large influx of prisoners in early 1942

By June 1942 the camp strength had risen to 1500, including some 450 New Zealanders.

(including some 400 New Zealanders) made necessary its use for accommodation. Water was plentiful, there were proper ablutions outside the huts and adequate latrines, but the poor drainage system was to be a source of trouble later. Hot baths were irregular and there was the usual difficulty in getting rid of lice.

The camp food was much the same as it was in other camps and suffered from the same ration cut. Red Cross food and fifty cigarettes were distributed weekly while supplies lasted. The Italians seldom failed to issue the standard tobacco ration, equivalent to five cigarettes daily. Normal Italian clothing issues were made, but when in early spring Red Cross clothing arrived (as it did about this time at most camps in Italy) Italian garments had to be returned. Many private parcels began to arrive pilfered and there were long delays in the censorship of letters. A camp welfare committee, set up according to Article 43

‘In any locality where there may be prisoners of war they shall be authorised to appoint representatives to represent them before the military authorities and the Protecting Powers…. in the event of the prisoners deciding to organise among themselves a system of mutual aid, such organisation shall be one of the functions of the prisoners’ representatives.'

of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention to deal with these and other matters relating to the men's welfare, was disbanded in February 1942 by the commandant, who would thenceforth treat only with the senior British NCO. No neutral inspector visited the camp in the first two and a half months of 1942, and special permission had to be got for a letter to Geneva, which even if permitted was subject to censorship and a delay of up to three months.

Educational classes flourished in much the same way as at Chiavari, though entertainments were hampered by lack of a proper hut and equipment. A New Zealander writes of studying surveying and sitting examinations under an Australian sergeant; another writes of ‘all trades and professions’ being taught. Red Cross consignments made possible the formation of a library, a large number of the books having been selected for their educational value. Accordions and mouth-organs helped to provide the music in the concerts that were held by each hut. In one respect Gruppignano was better off than Chiavari: the large area where the check parades were held was available for sport—baseball, cricket, soccer and volleyball—although wet weather made it too muddy to use. Much of the problem of recreation in summer was solved if there was space for physical play, and space for others to watch.

The last of the shipwrecked party left Tuturano in early May for Campo PG 65, which had bee