ANOTHER WITTENBERG

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2981, 19 January 1917, Page 6

ANOTHER WITTENBERG

TYPHUS IN A GERMAN PRISON CAMP

AN APPALLING STORY

The report on tho typhus epidemic at the prisoners' camp at Glardelogeii by the Government Committee on tho Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War, which was recently issued as a. "White Paper, is an appuliing record of German'brutality, equal to tho barbarity of tho officials at tho notorious Wittenberg camp. In a summary of the "White Paper published by tho London "Times," it is stated that the epidemic was the direct result of ■the filthy, and neglected condition of the camp, and when it broke out tho Germans deserted tho prisoners and left them to fight the disease without equipment. It lusted four months, and in that time there were 2000 cases. Fortunately tho disease was of a mild type, hut 15 per cent, of those attacked, died. The report is based on the accounts given by three R.A.M.C. officers—Major P. C. T. Davy, Captain A. J. Brown, and Captain. Scott-Williams —who were at Gardelegcn during the time, and their plain statements of fact reveal a. degree of callousness and cowardice on the part of tho Germans that is hardly to be believed. They tell, too-/ a fine story of .self-sacrifico and devotion to duty on the part of the victims.

Conditions before the Outbreak. Gardelegea camp—which is about a mile and a half from the station of that name on the railway line between Berlin and! Hanover—covers an area of about 350 yards by 550, divided into eight compounds, Jeach containing eight huts. In this'area ivhen the epidemic broke out in February, 1915, there were about 11,000 prisonersFrench, Russians, Belgians, and 260 British. Tho nationalities were mixed up- so that 80 was the greatest number of British prisoners in one compound. Of the overcrowding Major Davy says:— "The overcrowding was such'as I have never before seen or imagined anywhere. Tho hut contained in the breadth four rows of straw or shaving palliasses, so arranged that laterally they were touching and'terminally only left the narrowest passage-way between. Here men of all nationalities were crowded together. In these huts, devoid of tables and stools; the men lived, slept, , and fed. They sat on their bags of shavings to eat their meals; they walked over each other in 'passing in and out; they lay there sick, and later on in many cases, died there cheek by jowl with their fellow-prison-ers.- The atmosphere by day, and still more by night, was indescribably foetid, and this.was their solo alternative to going outside in their meagre garments for fresh air."

Captain Scott-Williams, shows how this specially affected tho British prisoners:

"It was like ono largo palliasse all round the room. If one man was lying on his back, his neighbour must be on his side. The stench in the room at night was horrid, as windows were noarly always shut as soon as the English dropped to sleep." The prisoners were also insufficiently fed. Major Davy says:_ "I have no'hesitation in saying that tho diet tho prisoners received was not sufficient to keep an adult in a normal state of nutrition. I wish to be clearly understood; I ,mean that every man who subsisted on what was issued to him was gradually getting emaciated and anaemic, and was constantly a prey to the pangs of hunger." From the beginning of April, 1915, the British, and still more the French, existed nioro and more on what they received from home. The Russians, ■however, were not so fortunate. Up to the end of June only between 12 and 20 parcels a week arrived for them, and as at the end of May the official daily allowance of bread was reduced by half to 250 grammes per manequivalent to a thickish slice of an ordinary loaf—tho extremity of the hunger of these men became positively acute. Captain Brown says: "The men were semi-starved. It was no unusual sight to see a crowd of Russians on their hands and knees in the pit in which potato peelings were thrown, struggling to find a stray potato or a piece of rind with a little more potato than usual. This occurred day after day." . Want of Clothing. The men, too, were inadequately clothed. Of the British about 100 were wearing mixed fragments of Belgian, French, or Russian uniforms. Only about 30 had a pair of serviceable boots. About 100 had no boots at all and were left to walk about with their feet tied up in straw arid rags or in blanket slippers which they had made for themselves. Some had wooden-soled, heellesa clogs, quite unsuitable things for shuffling about in the snow. None had more than the clothes they stood in, and they suffered acutely from the cold. The vast majority had had their overcoats taken from them when they were made prisoners, and had never had them returned. Yet all this time there was a quantity of khaki service kit in the camp store, which the commandant first of all neglected and finally refused to distribute. Tho heating arrangements were totally inadequate. _ The sanitary condition of the camp is described by Major Davy and Captain Brown in "terms which cannot properly he repeated in the Committee Beport." Latrine work was specially allotted to the British prisoners. Notwithstanding a sufficiency of water there wero, before tho outbreak, practically no facilities for personal cleanliness. Major Davy found many men who had heen three months an the camp without Having heen once able to get a hath. The result of these conditions was that, by the month of -February, 1915, every man in the camp of every lifttionalitv was infected with the body louse; lico swarmed in every garment ■the- men wore, and in every blanket thev slept in. In addition, the guards li.id established "a reign of terror and brutality." Major Daw reports:— "At the daily roll-cnll paradfts men w»ro tlriven onfc-nf their Wrack-rooms with kicks and blows. Tlie German mider-officers vpto the chief offenders. The German officers, of whom ono was in command in each company, wore mostly elderly men. who seenied quitn in the hands'of their wider-officers. I never once saw one check nn imdprofficer for the most flasrant bullying."