Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Head Count – Daily writing- April 24

We all stood in a naked yard, the grass beneath our bleeting feet had been worn away through wandering and scratching away every day, plotting and scheming means of escape. How to get through that bed of barbed wire. Guard towers ringed the fence every 50 metres, so going through the fence was impossible, digging seemed to be the only real option. Some clever dick had recently made an attempt at escaping underneath a lorry, so we had all been lined up to have our names and numbers called and checked. Our personal guard -’Fritz’ we called him – walked the aisles touching heads, making sure we were real bodies – a few months ago we had made a decoy out of a mop and bit of stolen cardboard while one of the other chaps raced across the fields – we never heard of his fate… but we were put on limited rations for a month as punishment.

Our barracks were equally as stark as the exercise yard, thin pine slats that ached with cold in winter a pot belly stove that supplied a lick of heat and two blankets per man. The Red cross parcels were always welcome – of course the huns got to them first and took the best bits – but how would we know? In the numbing winter nights though those red cross blankets could not erase that chill that crept around fingers and toes and strangled our blood – we longed for a humble English bed and crackling fire.

The huts all reeked with the stench of uniforms worn and re-worn and worn down to almost nothing – Fritz was not going to supply us with any clothing, but the officers tried to make us maintain some form of cleanliness regime. Discicipine is what got us through until liberation. Thankfully we had not become a ‘concentration camp’ , yes we were thin, but not in the way some of those horror stories that later emerged were……