大象传媒

I have been asked sometime ,if I had any
fears,whilst in captivity. There is one,which I recall- the fear of illness .
Not a small ailment,like a heavy cold or
trouble with my feet-after all,I was not
going anywhere. But-the possibility of a
serious illness,was quite a worry.
I felt great sympathy for the American
soldiers,because many of them had been wounded in the fierce fighting in the Battle
of the Bulge in the Ardennes.Some of them
showed me their wounds,and the paper bandages,which was all that covered them.
Surviving was difficult enough,when you
were fit and reasonably well,but to be troubled by such ailments as Dysentry or
Tapeworm,that affected quite a number of
P.of War was to add to the hardships.
Long term prisoners-of war were affected by malnutrition-and a shortage of
vitamins. Of course,POW's of other
nationalities were treated much worse by the
Germans.as I found out one day.
I had been in the cook-house at the
top of the camp,and must have come out the
wrong door. I found myself in an unfamiliar
section. As I glanced through the wire,I saw
a heap of bones rising from the ground and they took the shape of a human skeleton.
But - the skeleton moved. I thought at
first,that I was hallucinating-brought on by
poor and insufficient feeding.
The skeleton shuffled,slow step by
slow step towards a hut in the distance,and
finally disappeared. Returning to the cook-
house,I asked one of the guards,to explain
what I had seen. He informed me that I had
been looking into the section of the camp ,
where Russian and Polish P.O.W's were kept.
They received very little food,and gradually
wasted away. The death rate amongst such
prisoners was very high. This explained the
regular daily journeys of the Death Cart,which we could all see from our perimeter fence. On the wagon,pulled by
emaciated prisoners,was a pile of wooden boxes,which were makeshift coffins..
They were buried in some far corner of the camp complex .

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