13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison

by John Alan Lyde Caunter

Personally I cannot justly complain, as I was one of the few who did not suffer from eating it.

It was a great day when the first consignment of re-directed parcels arrived. By standing in a queue for two hours the parcel could be obtained from the German censors. One of the first prisoners to draw his parcel came back with it under his arm, and a disgusted expression on his face. Nobody dared ask what he had got in his parcel, he looked too savage for the risk to be taken. However, it soon got about that he had got a dozen tennis balls! It was not surprising that he had looked like murder, when one realised that no tennis was possible in this camp, and that food was what he most wanted.

Fortunately our trials in this latter respect soon ended, as the parcels began to come in as regularly as they did at Crefeld. In addition the Crefeld commandant's promise, that the food boxes would be sent on, was fulfilled, and once more we had plenty of provisions. The soldiers also received their parcels now, and from what some of them said, they generally do wherever they are, thanks to the untiring energy of those who see to this for them in England.

One day we caught a specimen of the beasts which attacked us at night, and took it to the German officer pinned on a board. He made excuses and blamed the wooden huts, saying how impossible it was to deal with vermin. However, our room was to be fumigated. We were ordered to clear everything out of our room, and then the Germans arrived with a blow-flame with which to run over the bedsteads and clear out the cracks in the walls. Another German splashed creosote on to the floor, and places too high up to be reached by the blow flame.

We realized that this was all "eyewash," as the gaps between the partition walls separating the rooms were in some cases wide enough to allow the passage of one's hand. Therefore the many footed beasts of prey lurking in such places would easily avoid the strafing by going a few inches next door via these cracks. Of course the other rooms were not fumigated at the same time, so their preserves must have been entered by the game driven out of ours. We all wrote home for Keating's, but the letters never fetched up.

The censoring of our letters was done at a headquarter censor's office at Osnabrück, after our removal from Crefeld. This meant endless delay and often non-arrival of incoming letters, and practically a complete suspension of the outgoing mail.

The reason for this latter fact is not difficult to explain. Of course the prisoners described the new camp in these letters, and as the place was bad from every point of view, the contents of these epistles were not liked by the censors at Osnabrück. Consequently the letters were either burnt or kept. Of course the non-arrival of letters in England would do more to cause inquiries to be made at this end than anything else, but the Germans don't see things in that light.

This camp, Schwarmstedt, was known as No. 2, but why a number should be assigned and no name given to it, only a Boche could say; possibly it was because the Germans did not want it visited by any interfering inquisitive neutral country representative, since it was such a bad camp. I was pleased to hear that it was visited shortly after, and a full report made. I believe some of the grievances were attended to.

When we were at Crefeld some of us had taken up fencing as a form of exercise and amusement. The sabres and épées were sent out from England, but the Germans were very careful to take charge of them on their arrival, and used to let us have them at specific times, locking them up carefully at six o'clock every evening.

This care was continued for over a year, and then I suppose realising at last that as weapons with which to attack the camp-guards they were absolutely useless and that bed legs would be much more likely weapons if anyone wished to do such an absurd thing, they suddenly ignored the old fencing weapon and we were able each to have his own. When we moved from Crefeld, I took mine with me, tied quite openly on to a kit bag.