They also counted all our bed sheets to make certain that we were not using them for some form of escape. This usually took about an hour and we would hang around outside and harass the guards. The guards were usually older men or those unable to be in the army. They always checked our knives and forks to see if we were making weapons from them.
Alfred Jocque was in the bunk next to me and he was the bombadier on a B-17 that was shot down. One day he took his shirt off and his longjohns were pink and red. He told us that the pilot and co-pilot who were directly above him in the bomber had been shot and their blood ran down over him and stained all his clothing before he bailed out. All the enlisted men from the bombers went to different camps so there were only officers with us. We all got along well with the men in our room and there were no difficulties. Most of the guys were a happy bunch, no doubt due to simply having survived. It was June and the weather was warm so we spent a lot of time outside mainly walking the perimeter, which was about 3/4 of a mile.
The Red Cross provided us with almost everything we got while in prison camp aside from the food from the Germans. (when it was available). Red Cross deliveries were made by truck from Switzerland and were not dependable due to air raids, strafing attacks and poor road conditions. The Swiss volunteers who drove the trucks certainly deserved a medal for bravery. The food parcels were about one foot square and six inches high. We received one each and it was to last a week. Mostly the parcels were American and some Canadian. The American ones contained KLIM (powdered milk), a D-bar (chocolate), prunes or raisins, Spam liver pate, one cake of soap, peanut butter, margarine, army crackers, sugar, cheese, coffee or tea and two packs of cigarettes. Most items were in cans and sometimes hard to open. There was always someone yelling for a "church key" (the metal key on the bottom of a can) to borrow. The Canadian parcels had different contents and were not as well liked. Their tins of margarine were always rancid and later on I will tell you what they were used for.
Each room did its own cooking and we put a clothes locker on its side beneath the window to store food in and as a work surface. We also had a table with a couple of chairs and picnic benches. It wasn't long before we decided to divide our room in half to make it simpler for the one doing the cooking. Eventually I took over the food preparation for our side and did it for about three months with the help of Bruce. You were responsible for the food, how to ration it as well as preparation and cleanup. Due to the shortage of German food, the cookhouse was only used to dispense hot water for beverages and another pot for washing dishes. Before each meal I would run to the cookhouse before they ran out of hot water, and run back before it got cold. They also gave out potatoes, kohlrabi, bread and blood sausage at times.
The one kitchen for the whole barracks was a room with a stove and a daily ration of coal to be used at mealtime. A time for that use was assigned to each room. We also had a small stove in the corner of our room to use for heat when we could got something to burn in it. We would cook on this when we could, but actually most of the food was eaten cold. When we got potatoes we would draw straws to see who would peel them as the Germans used human fertilizer and the smell was terrible. This was the only time I smoked cigarettes. You put one in your mouth and turned your head as far as possible while peeling. After we had been there several months and became more desperate for food, we just washed them well and ate the skins also.
They must have had a lot of beehives in this area of Germany because when we got honey, we got three gallons at a time. We carried it back to the barracks in a wash basin. This amount was for just the twelve of us! Once a week we got a ration of German black bread which I believe was one loaf per man a week. It was very dark with a sour taste and was baked on a layer of sawdust about 1/4 inch deep an the bottom of the loaf. We tried at first to scrape it off but it was so hard we gave up, left it on and ate it. As it was so heavy, each loaf weighing about five pounds, when we went to the cook house to got it we took along a door off one of the lockers. It took two men to carry the twelve loaves back on the door. We had one sharp butcher knife for slicing and I got so I could get 60 slices out of each loaf. The bread was so hard, you could slice it paper thin and could almost see through it. We sliced it this way so we could have enough for breakfast, dinner and supper, as well as a snack before bedtime. When we had honey there usually was so much of it that we would have a paper thin slice of bread with at least 1/2 inch of honey on it.
We tried all combinations of whatever food we had and most were better at it than I was. The prunes could be cooked and whipped with powdered milk to make a topping for our attempts at desserts. We tried Peanut butter pie which was made with a cracker crust with the prune whip mixed with the peanut butter for the filling It tasted good then but I tried it once after I got home and couldn't eat it. The Canadian crackers were large round ones and we would soak them in water until they swelled to three or four times their dry size, then fry them on a hot stove. This way they were more filling. The kohlrabi were grown extensively in Germany and tasted alright but were very woody in texture.
The blood sausage was another story and it was a long while before I could eat it. You might say I needed to be starving first. It came like salami, in a tube, and was nothing but congealed blood from animals. If you could stand the smell of it cooking, you fried it in a pan until it was black and as hard as grape nuts. You could eat it by washing it down with a hot drink. The powdered milk was in a can with the word KLIM written on the side. After we had been there about six months one of the guys was laying on the top bunk with his head upside down. He looked across the room at the KLIM can and suddenly jumped up yelling "KLIM" is milk spelled backwards". It was amazing that we had gone this long without anyone noticing this.
It may sound like we were getting a lot of food, but it was just enough to keep us going and most of the time we were hungry but not starving. It was interesting that talk did not include girls wives or girl friends. The main topic of conversation was food. We talked food, thought food, and dreamed food all of the time. We were surprised to learn that food preferences were so different in the areas of the U. S. represented by the prisoners. One guy in our room was from Kentucky and he had never heard of goulash (but couldn't wait to try it when he got home.) We were always discussing recipes and ingredients of different dishes. The girls were not talked about, although they were on our minds all the time. Several times there were work groups of Russian prisoners that passed by outside the fence and among them were women. They didn't appeal to us as they were all short and heavy and wore old brown overcoats that reached the ground. It was wintertime and they were just plodding along in a line.
The indoor toilet in our barracks was very interesting. It was used from 10PM till 6AM. There was a trough down one side and seats at the far end. When sitting there you would have a line of guys standing right in front of you. One had to get used to them all standing there yelling at you to hurry. Between ten and midnight the lights were on and some characters had the nerve to sit there reading a book while ignoring all the others standing in line swearing. After midnight it was totally dark and you had to feel your way around to keep from bumping into someone. Neil Ullo had gotten himself a pair of wooden slippers and one time in the middle of the night we heard him clomping down the hall on his way to the bathroom. The next thing we heard was a lot of yelling and swearing and the clomp, clomp, clomp of the slippers going at a high rate of speed down the hall. The next day Neil secretly told us that he had gone down there in the dark in such a hurry and thinking it was the trough, got on the back of a fellow standing there! At night in Germany it was total blackness and you could see absolutely nothing. Most people have no idea of the many good things that the Red Cross does. Without them we would really have had a terrible time. Besides the food which we couldn't have done without, we were supplied with sports equipment musical instruments and books. You could even order things through them and it was not long before they would be delivered. Some of the boys were in the middle of their education when they were drafted and they ordered books to help them continue their college education. I remember one who was studying to become a mortician and he got several very expensive books on the subject. We also received playing cards. Although I didn't play, several in my room played bridge day after day. One I'll never forget was Robert Ripstein from New York City who whistled "Holiday for Strings" through his teeth a11 the time he was playing cards. He nearly drove us all nuts! Even today I can't bear to hear that music! He was the only one in camp that irritated the fellows in our room and to me all of them were just great guys to be around.