General Fortune with the soldiers

They weren’t always in the same camp and were moved around usually in cattle trucks. A sketch of the General given to the men

Menu from Seaforth Highlanders New year Dinner 1943/44

As well as having to look after the officers Kenny was sent out to work. At one point Kenneth was sent to a stone quarry. The men would shovel the sand and expose the stone underneath. Kenny also worked in a garden growing vegetables. This was a good job as it enabled them to steal a bit of extra food. Kenny remembered Alec Cowie from Inver being sent to work on a farm and being killed in a threshing mill. When the soldiers were not out at work they played cards to pass the time. Later on when Red Cross parcels came through and conditions were a bit better they had boxing and football matches and plays were put on by some of the soldiers. They made a kind of beer fermenting anything and everything in a barrel beside their stove. The officers also prepared a New Year dinner for the men and invited the men on beautifully hand written menus. These artistic skills were put to other uses.

Every camp had an escape committee and if any body had an escape plan then they would have to report it to the escape committee. This was so one plan wouldn’t affect another. Kenny remembered two escape attempts in particular. One used ladders to scale the fence at night time and 7 or 8 men escaped but some were recaptured as they had ran out of food and just sat down and waited to be caught. Kenny’s job was to walk round the camp behind one of the guards carrying a small light so that those trying to escape knew where the guards were. The second was in a camp where it was very marshy and there was an attempt to dig a tunnel but it was not a good idea. The tunnel was started under the cellar of the cookhouse. First they had to shift piles of coal then go down a hole to dig out the tunnel. One prisoner went down to put a light cable in and was electrocuted. His death was the end of the tunnel.

If prisoners were caught doing something wrong or making plans to escape there would be extra parades and the prisoners would be made to stand for hours outside their huts.

If you broke a rule the punishment was that you would be put in solitary in a cell for 2 or 3 days. You would not get food the first day. Once a prisoner was shot by a guard from a tower for not rushing inside from playing ice hockey when British planes were flying overhead.	As the war proceeded there was no wood for the coffins
A funeral service at one of the camps

A postcard Kenny sent to his family form his prison camp in 1944. Kenny is second right back row

Sorting the Red Cross parcels

The men were allowed to write letters home from the camps. It was a long time until the soldiers heard from their families after first being captured. Kennny’s brother Roddie remembers the letters home were censored and parts were cut out of them. Once, Kenny received a Red Cross parcel with a pair of hand knitted socks. Sometimes the people who knitted socks for the POWs put their names inside them. Incredibly inside Kenny’s was the name of Mrs Johnstone, Seafield, Portmahomack, someone that he knew well.

Over time the men picked up some German and would ‘have a yarn’ with the guards. However, the Germans were much stricter if their own officers were around. It upset some of the men at the end of the war when General Patten of the US army liberated their camp and some of the ‘yanks’ shot some of the guards at the camp. They then had to wait quite a while before being flown home to Britain.