GERMAN CAMP SCANDAL.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15774, 15 December 1916, Page 11

GERMAN CAMP SCANDAL.

APPALLING CONDITIONS,

CALLOUS BRUTALITY

(FEOil OUR OWS CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, November 3- I Another chapter of deliberate cruelty, consistent brutality, and callous indifference to suffering is revealed to the public in the report issued by the Government Committee on the Treatment of British Prisoners of War. The report deals with the conditions which prevailed in the ca ™P at Gardelegen before and during the course of the typhus epidemic of last year, and the details now given are on an equality with the horrors which characterised Wittenberg. The prisoners were starved, ill-clad, overcrowded, and compelled to live in conditions ot indescribable filth. The outbreak ol typhus was the direct consequence ot the conditions, and, as at Wittenberg, the German guards abandoned tne camp without delay, leaving the un happy prisoners to manage as best tney could Not only did the German authorities lend no assistance hut they refused to supply the absolutely necessary food, medicines, and dressings reel uired. For weeks the small band ot British, French, and Russian doctors drafted into the camp, -with the willung aid of orderlies enlisted from among the prisoners, toiled with self-sacrificing devotion to try to stem the progress of the disease. * The report has been compiled from detailed accounts furnished, by Major P C T Daw, Captain A. J. Brown, and Captain Scott-Williams, all of the R.A.M.C. Major Davy and Captain Brown were transferred to tho camp just before the epidemic broke out; Captain Scott-Williams was brought there when all but three of the doctors had fallen victims to the disease. OVERCROWDING AJSiD INSUFFICIENT FOOD. When the outbreak itself hroke out the camp contained about prisoners—4ooo Russians, 6000 French. 700 Belgians, and only . about British. It had been officially ordered that the four nationalities ishonjd bo well mixed in proportionate numbeis in cach barrack room. Accordingly, out of a total of :530 British prisoners in the camp, eighty was the greatest number in any one company. ith regard to the overcrowding of the prisoners, Major Davy says it was "such as I have never before seen or imagined anywhere. The hut contained in the breadth , four rows of straw, or shaving palliasses, so arranged laterally that they were touchin<r, and terminally only left tho narrowist 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 ot shavings to eat their meals; they walked over each other in passing m and out; they lay there sick, and, later on, in many cases, died there cheek by jowl, with their fellow-prisoners. The atmosphere by day, still more by night, was indescribably fetid, and thi. was their sole alternative to going outside in their meagre garments for fresh air I have no hesitation in saying that the diet the 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 anajmic, and was constantly a prey to the pangs of hunger. The rations were altogether insufficient, and as a result the men were semi-starved. It -was no un- ] usual sight to see a crowd of ( on their hands and knees in tho pit . in which potato peelings were thrown, , struggling to find a stray potato ° r piece of rind with a little more potato , than usual. This occurred day after , da Clothing, too, was utterly "jadequate, and Major T)avy thinks that, . on a moderate estimate, only about thirty had a pair of servicable boots. About a hundred had no toots at all, and were left to walk about with their feet tied up in straw and rags, or in blanket slippers which they had made for themselves. None had more clothes than they stood m, 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. Then, also, the sanitary condition of the camp wj\s deplorable. Pnor _ n __ the outbreak of typhus, thero were practically no facilities for cleanliness. In. each company there was one stand-pipe leadmg off to a trough. At this some 1200 men had to congregate each day, to wash their , eating utensils, their ciobhes, and j themselves—and all this without soap. • Major Daw found many men who had | been three months in the camp wthout . having once been able to get a hath. . The result was that by the month of j February, 1915. every man m camp ot , every nationality, was infested with ( the body louse, lice swarmed m every garment the men wore, and in every blanket in which they slept. A REIGN OF TERROR. The guards treated the prisoners with the utmost harshness. Major Davy had sufficiently long experience of these guards before they abandoned the camp to satisfy him that a reign m terror and brutality existed, and he savs: "At the daily roll-call parades the men were driten out of their barrack rooms with kicks and Uows. The German under-officers were the chief offenders. The German officers, of : whom one was in command in each company, were mostly elderly men, . who seemed quite in the hands of thei , under-officers. I never once saw one , check an under-officer for the most | flagrant bullying." It was, thcTefore, i a band of overcrowded, half -staged, ill-clad, shivering and terrorised men : who confronted Major Davy and Captain Brown when they arrived at camp on February 11th, l-'lo. At that time the weather was intensely cold, and snow was still falling heavily. On entering th ® room, 6ays Captain Brown, the shock I received was too awful for words. The atmosphero was almost too toui. All windows were shut as the only means of warmth. There were about 100 ot the most miserable human bemgs I ever beheld—British, French, and Belcrians occupied this room, the number of British being about twenty-mx. The men were emaciated, nl-clad, ana dirty beyond description, and in most cases- were engaged in killing as many lice as possible in their clothes to keep the numbers down as much as possible,' as one man put it. The senior-non-commissioned officer in the room was a company sergeant-major of the Roval Scots. Being so appalled at the i dirty state of all the men, himself ini c i„ded, T remonstrated with htm. and i asked him whv thev were so positively : filthy and if tnev had lost all interest in life, for so it seemed. His reply wa* that thev had tio ouporiunuv of a bath since arrival''--and they ?iau been there for ten weeks. Thus were sown the seeds of the epidemic which soon •supervened. RETREAT OF THE GUARD*. The British doctors met the camp commandant, Colonel Brunner ana the camp mediud officer, Dr. \\enzu»

The former eaid that if they obeyed orders and did their work without complaining, they would he well treated, and everything possible would be don*for their comfort; if not-, they would be punished. Noting that the camp hospital contained 200 beds, although the space was sufficient for only ninety, and thx."t the supply of drugs and equipment -was utterly inadequate, the report goes on to describe what followed the outbreak of the epidemic. A commission of German doctors visited J-' 1 . 0 ' camp, and within half an hour of then departure there was r. stir amonj the German guards. They were packing up and preparing for a hasty retreat. In two hours there was not a German inside the camp, and the sick were left quite unattended. Picsently the sentries were seen drawn up in a coidon twenty paces outside the outermost barbed-wire fence, some or } them engaged in re-srecting the kennels, and putting up fond boilers lor the dogs that had hitherto em- ! ployed inside the camp to assist. t:iein. | Before leaving, the sentries h&d unlocked every gate of every company, and the entire prison population roamed freely through the camn from one company to another,, rejoicing in the novelty of it. "Whether so intended or not, the lamentable effect of t.us was that, whereas the cases had hitherto mivinlV come from S Company, now every company was inextricably mixed, and the epidemic became general. In due course the French, Russian, and English doctors were summoned to the ov.ter barbed wire to meet the commandant, who told them that the camp was in quarantine: t-h&t a "sanitary cordon" had been drawn round it; that nothing of any kind, sort, or description was to pass out, and that the sentries had orders to shoot anyone who attempted to leave: that he held the doctors resnonsible for the treatment of the sick, the discipline and good order of the camp, and its general internal arrangement; that lie or other officer would come to the same spot .daily, and would receive what requests or representations they had to make; that s hell would be hung up outside, and that upon its being rung someone was to come to the fence to receive orders. "SICK" RATIONS. The medical officers had to take stock of the situation, which was appalling. The hospital was full to repletion, and the sick had to be dumped down anywhere; there were no beds, f.nd they had to lie on their shavinglilled bags. No milk or eggs or other invalid fare was forthcoming. It was ordained that the sick were to continue on exactly the. same rations as they had been receiving—the same soup, black bread and raw herring for each —a diet "tragically grotesque for a man in the middle of an acute illness," as Dr. Davy remarks. Dr. Wenzil fell a victim t<> his own lieglcct and died in a few Of sixteen doctors in the camp, twelve contracted the disease, and two died. Some time after the epidemic had been in progress, and when only two French doctors and Captain Brown had so far escaped infection, Captain Scott-Williams, with four French doctors, was brought t 0 camp. By that time the epidemic was beginning to subside, but there was still much work to be done. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of the work done by the medical men—British, French, and Russian — and the Committee comment that "the visitation at least furnished the opportunity for an exhibition of unselfish devotioii to duty and of heroic self-sacri-fice, which it may be hoped -will be remembered and chcrished long after the callousness and cowardice which evoked it have mercifully passed into ob- ; livion."