EXPERIENCES IN GERMANY

Evening Star, Issue 25005, 26 October 1943, Page 3

EXPERIENCES IN GERMANY

REPATRIATED PRISONERS OF WAR EFFECTS OF ALLIED BOMBING STRESSED (Ree. 10.35 a.m.) RUGBY, Oct. 25. The important effects of the 11.A.F. and United States day and night air offensive were stressed by many of the repatriated prisoners of war who arrived in Britain to-day. A hospital orderly, who was working in a hospital at Marienburg when Fortresses bombed the aircraft works, said: "I had to help pick the dead and wounded from the wreckage. _ The bombing was marvellous in precision. Living houses at the back of the factory were untouched. There is a French prisoner of war camp 100 yards from the factory, and only one Frenchman was injured, as far as I know." . A private in the R.A.M.C. said the prisoners would have starved but for the Red Cross parcels. When they were captured in France they were forced to inarch to Germany, averaging nearly 10 miles a day, although badly fed and having to sleep in the fields. Another private said the British had been brought from Italy to Germany since "the Italian armistice after having signed documents which they believed referred to their repatriation. One man said the hospital where he was working in Crete was captured by the Germans the first day of the invasion, but that night they were released by New Zealanders. He and others were recaptured on July 1 of this year. " The German food given us was simply spuds and bread," he said. " Once three of us had to live for a day on 3 l-31b of bread consisting largely of wood shavings and sawdust. The Germans really fear the Russians and are treating them very badly. In the winter of 1941 as many as 50 were dying daily in a camp near ours." The youngest of the repatriated prisoners is 11 weeks old. He returned with his mother, but his father remained in a prison camp in the Vosges, where the baby was born. The eldest is 73. He was captured in 1940 at Le Havre, where he was working for an American business firm.