DIFFICULT DAYS IN HALFAYA

Southland Times, Issue 24648, 21 January 1942, Page 5

DIFFICULT DAYS IN HALFAYA

Ordeal Of Prisoners Of War

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 19. “We knew that the Germans were about to surrender because they restored to us many of the belongings the Italians had stolen.” A released British prisoner thus described the beginning of the end in Halfaya, says a message from the special correspondent of the British United Press at Halfaya. The bedraggled band of Britons were prisoners for about eight weeks. Hollow-cheeked from hunger, thirsty and with eyes burning from fever they stumbled from caverns and cheered when the South Africans inarched up the river-bed. A pilot officer told how he asked the German commander specially to mark the prisoners’ caves because of the British bombing and the shelling of the naval bombardment. Major Bach provided 200 petrol tins with which the letters “P.0.W.” (prisoners of war) were formed on the ground. After this the bombing of the prisoners’ area lessened.

The officer added that the prisoners’ daily ration was a small tin of bully beef for three. Two thirds of a pint of salty soup was the only liquid provided.

One Tommy admitted that he had not washed since November 25. A Royal Army Medical Corps orderly, with hands blackened from combined iodine and dirt, tended the wounded without water or bandages. He worked day and night until tottering.