大象传媒

In this first official camp we saw the very first
British Red Cross parcels, but they were not very plentiful with the result that each one had to be shared between us, it was not possible to divide certain items, without wasting a single crumb, so we often had the whole in turn. There was a very large pile of empty tins absolutely swarming with flies and the toilets consisted of a deep square pit, across which were laid at regular intervals beams like railway sleepers. Will leave the rest to the imagination! By now we were suffering the indignity of being infested with fleas, bugs and lice and were incessantly scratching ourselves. These may have travelled over from Tunisia with us.This scourge is never depicted in any of the films on POW life since the end of WW2. Such
films, from my point of view, tend to portray such an existence more akin to a holiday camp. it was not long before I suffered a nasty bout of Malaria (not the type our troops contracted in the desert, but a local type caused by the mountain air, so I was told). This necessitated a
spell in the camp hospital, which was overwhelmed with flies, so a few men waved blankets in order to shoo them out, by traversing the length of the room in line abreast, over and over again.The official camp hospital was at Caserta.

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