After my formal induction into the camp, I was marshalled with others to a transit hut and, with another prisoner, was given a Red Cross parcel to share. I must take opportunity of mentioning that the parcel also bore the “St John’s Ambulance” logo. This never seems to be remembered – the packages are always described simply as “Red Cross parcels” and I’ve got the chance here to put the record straight.
My uppermost thought would be on being handed a gift parcel. “Tea” was the only word that ran through my mind. We were dying for a drink and, as we opened the parcel, my expectations were high but I was out of luck – it contained coffee. Later, I found out that the parcels bearing a red stamp contained coffee and those with a black stamp contained tea. Once I had cracked this top secret code, I never went without the magic elixir again!
In the transit hut, the NCOs were separated from the other ranks and were all allocated their huts for the duration. I was sent to Hut 58A containing PoW who, like me, had been captured at Anzio. Being British, we soon had a meeting organised and we elected a sergeant-major of the Berkshires as Hut Leader and his colour sergeant as second-in-command. “Slim”, the German Unter-Offizier, advised us to read the Geneva Convention, a copy of which was in the camp library. The barrack lawyers discovered that the Convention clearly stated that no NCO Corporal or above should be made to work for the detaining power and so our hut automatically decided that we would not go on working parties outside the camp.
We settled down into a routine. We were paraded at 630am and, with German thoroughness, were lined up in ranks of five to be counted by Slim. Every morning, he said what sounded like “Pie dish, pie dish, pie dish” which puzzled us for a whole week before we found out that he was saying the German for thirty. There were regular sick parades and, as my injured eyes had not had any treatment since my stay in hospital in Rome, I decided to attend. The sergeant in charge told me that a Russian eye-specialist held a clinic three times a week and I eventually turned up to see him. At my examination, the symptoms I described were passed on to the doctor through several PoW interpreters but I could see that he could not make anything of what he was being told. I therefore resorted to my version of sign language. He laughed at my performance and nodded that he understood. What he prescribed were tea-leaf pultices and for both eyes to be painted with chemicals, the treatment varying from day to day. One day, both eyes were to be red and the next day one eye was to be green and the other black. The cost of the consultation was five cigarettes. Miraculously, within two weeks, my eyes were back to normal. Don’t ask me how but the treatment worked.
I won’t describe the hardship of camp life – that subject has been covered by countless authors. Instead, I’ll concentrate on the lighter side. One of the amusements we devised for ourselves turned out to be very rewarding in so far as a good laugh was concerned and, what’s more, it lasted right through to the end of our detention. In our hut, we had Gordon Highlanders, Berkshires and Sherwood Foresters. Now, one of the Sherwoods was not too bright and he had an unfortunate turn of mind which made him suspicious, particularly of me. Slim, the Unzer-Offizier, had been a prisoner of war in Ireland during the First World War and, as mentioned previously, had developed a love of Irish music. My conversation with him on the subject caught the attention of “Robin Hood”, as he was now universally known. He was sure that he was onto something and he convinced himself that I was passing information on to the enemy. As is well known, if you convince yourself, everything can seem suspect and once the others in the hut discovered this, they led him on at every opportunity.
On one occasion, we had been short of parcels for some time and things looked grim. “What do you know, George?”, one of the lads asked me. “Not a lot”, I replied. I went out and had a walk around and, on returning to the hut, I joked that our worries would soon be over: four railway wagons loaded with parcels were coming in, “How do you know?”, demanded Robin Hood suspiciously. “Oh with good ears, you can hear the buffers of the wagons as they are pulled along by the train,” I replied. Believe me, I was as astounded as the rest when we found next morning that four trucks, heavily laden with Red Cross parcels were being unloaded. “There you are”, shouted Robin Hood. “I bet Slim told him!”
Some prisoners started to be brought in from the Cassino front, of which two were billeted in our hut. It turned out that they were from Wembley. “I don’t know that part of London,” I remarked. Robin Hood even found this rather strange. “I wonder why George is pretending that he doesn’t know the area,” he said to someone or other. “These Londoners are artful,” he added. “I know all the people in my village.”
There had not been a single letter from home during the two months we had been in Stalag IVB. Then one morning, I got a letter from my wife, Rose. The news soon spread. This was the first letter any Anzio prisoner had received and I am quite sure that Robin Hood went round saying that, ”George has got a letter. Makes you think, doesn’t it?” At first, no-one believed the news that a letter had been received and they actually came from all over the camp to see it. It was some time before I got the chance to read it all the way through. I’m glad to say that my letter was the start of a deluge – after that, all received mail from home regularly.
The capitulation of Italy during the previous year, in 1943, meant that all British PoW had been released. They had taken this opportunity of collecting a few “spare parts” for re-assembling in due course. After a little time, the Germans rounded up most of these British prisoners and sent them to PoW camp Stalag IVB. Prior to their release by the Italians from Campo 66, the prisoners had received six piano accordions as a present from the Pope. They brought these (containing of course the recently acquired “spare parts”) with them to Stalag IVB. Enough said! Some very clever stuff took place in the way of dismantling and reassembling. The result was that we were able to listen secretly to the radio every evening after curfew and could hear the broadcasts from London! We got the news before the guards did and when Rome fell, we told the guards.
The news about Rome gave us a chance to play our biggest trick of all on Robin Hood. We were having a game of bridge and my partners taking care to speak when Robin was near enough to hear what was being said casually remarked, “You’re a Roman Catholic, aren’t you George?” ”Yes”, I replied. “What do you think of the news that now that the Allies have captured Rome, they are going to replace the Pope with the Archbishop of Canterbury?” he asked. Out shoots Robin from the hut – and twenty minutes later, the R.C. padre from the Italian PoW hut came rushing in, urging all Catholics to attend a meeting that he was arranging to protest about the Pope being replaced by “this Bishop of Canterbury”. We had no option but to tell him that it was one huge joke. We nearly died laughing! You can imagine the padre’s annoyance and, of course, it was the messenger who caught the full blast of it.