WITTENBERG HORRORS

Otago Witness, Issue 3342, 3 April 1918, Page 23

WITTENBERG HORRORS

THE PRISONERS' ORDEAL. The gold medal of the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society was presented to Major H. E, Priestley. R.A.M.C., C.M.G., the hero of Wittenberg Camp, at an interesting ceremony at the West London Hospital. . Dr A. J. Rice Oxley, president of the society, who was in the chair, mentioned that Major Priestley (home on sick leave) had, since his release, been abroad in medical 'charge of a hospital ship, and during the last 10 months had been torpedoed twice. He briefly sketched the services rendered by Major Priestley to his 12.000 fellow prisoners at Wittenberg in the filthy and appalling conditions imposed on them by the Germans. The name of Dr Aschenbach, the German medical chief, who with his colleagues fled when typhus fever broke put-in the camp, had earned (said _ the chairman) the undying contempt of this and all succeeding generations. • In returning thanks, Major Priestley made some interesting new revelations of the horrible sufferings of the British prisoners ak Wittenberg. Prisoners, he said, were subjected to deliberate brutality, struck with butt ends of rifles, and kicked by German soldiers. Throughout the day there was some form of bullying. On one occasion before the outbreak of typhus he found a man in a .small room with his right arm broken and two bayonet wounds, in his loins. The German soldiers fired at the men, and on one day five men were shot from the other side "of the barbed wire. Prisoners were fired on as they entered the huts, and if a face was seen at a window. Men lay on the floor for protection, and five were hit while so lying. Major Priestley spoke of the want of sufficient clothing and bad feeding, and said in spite of starvation, brutality, and disease the men never lost their courage.—(Applause.) Credit was due to the men who volunteered as nurses during the typhus epidemic ;. though some lost* their lives.," there were still volunteers. —(Applause.)