Prisoners of War Fund
Early in the war the problem of how to deal with the Prisoners of War had to be faced, and Sir Reginald Thynne, having organised the Comforts Fund, now turned his attention to this at the request of Colonel Streatfeild. The Grenadiers were fortunate in having far fewer prisoners than other regiments, but the fact that there were men of the Regiment at the mercy of a country, which had proved itself capable of the most dastardly cruelty, was enough to warrant energetic steps being taken at once to ensure that the men in Germany should not starve.
Major-General Sir Reginald Thynne set to work to devise some organisation by which parcels of food would reach the prisoners regularly, and a Prisoners of War Fund, to which many old officers of the Regiment contributed, was started, and in the initial stages was partly financed by the Comforts Fund.
In the first place it was decided to send all men in Germany a good parcel of food and some tobacco every fortnight, but this was not enough, and a system was started by which many prisoners of war of the Regiment were "adopted" by a lady belonging to the Regiment, a wife, a mother, or a sister of an officer. The adopter was asked to undertake the despatch of a parcel once a fortnight, so that with the parcels from the Fund each prisoner received weekly a sufficient supply of food. This worked admirably, but the labour involved was necessarily heavy, since the men were constantly moved from one place to another.
By an arrangement with the American Embassy in Berlin a complete refit of outer and under clothing was sent to each prisoner by Colonel Streatfeild, but these were not provided by the Prisoners of War Fund.
This method of supplying food to the prisoners in Germany was not altogether satisfactory. In the first place, men in good regiments were much better looked after than those who belonged to regiments where there was no organisation for the care of prisoners; and in the second place, it was open to abuse. Some men, for instance, wrote to various people in England and obtained by this means more parcels than they could possibly want. One prisoner managed by diligent writing to obtain as many as fifty parcels. The difficulty of getting food into Germany increased as the war went on, and it was soon found that the whole problem had become too big for voluntary effort. Accordingly in October 1916 a Central Prisoners of War Committee was formed under the auspices of the Government, and the supply of regular food was officially taken in hand with the aid of the American Embassy in Berlin. This did not entail the abolition of the various regimental funds, but it ensured every prisoner being provided with an adequate amount of food. After this the packets of food were sent with a Red Cross label, provided by the authorities, and no parcel could be sent, unless it had been packed by the Central Committee, or under their authority, as they were responsible that the parcels contained nothing that contravened the regulations. No prisoner was allowed to receive parcels from more than one authorised organisation.
The following memorandum was issued for the guidance of the prisoners' relations and friends: