The Blessing of Routine

Life in this camp started to return to so-called normal.  We had established a sort of church service, and I think everyone attended.  We mostly sang hymns that we all knew.  We had no books.  “We Gather Together To Ask the Lord’s Blessing” was a favorite as it had been when I was in jail in Lille.  I had a Bible from Grace in my last parcel, and I was reading it in the evenings after lockup, actually from cover to cover before we left this camp.  The bible disappeared, though, I think during a room search.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!

Another incident I feel I can connect to the guard dying at the top of the pole was even more violent.  As secretary I got around to all the barracks, even the cook house.  I never got anything as a handout, but I liked looking at the food.  This particular day I saw a red-headed officer through the window coming into the camp.  I was sure he was up to no good as he had a reputation for excessive sternness and was given to displays of hatred toward us.  We wondered if someone dear to him had been killed in the bombing raids.

He drew his revolvers and started shouting.  I never knew what he shouted.  He was outside the cook house so my interest was in avoiding him.  I got behind the brick chimney and kept behind it.  As he moved, I moved and kept the chimney between us.  He didn’t run around the camp, but he did clear it out.  Everyone had run for cover into the barracks.

He left as suddenly as he had come into the camp.  I never saw him again, but I never forgot him.  I had had guns pointed at me, been threatened even with death, but never before been in range of someone who was shooting in every direction.  It was an event to remember.

It was in this camp that we saw the buzz-bomb, or V bomb.  We had no idea what it was.  All we knew was it was too small for a plane.  It was high up and going at a tremendous speed.  We did hear from our radio source, the good old BBC, of the destruction caused by these unmanned bombs aimed at London and their indiscriminate bombing of the city, the death and terror they caused.  It was horrible, we heard, and we also were told by BBC about the Royal Air Force’s attempt to shoot them down before they hit London.  I thought back to the time we threw our toilet paper over the fences to celebrate the Allies’ crossing of the English Channel, and here we were still prisoners and the Allies still weren’t on the continent.

Cold weather was coming on us.  It was October, and I had been on the continent now over ten months.  The Germans we knew were having a bad time with a war on two fronts.  I was still healthy, hungry but healthy, and I did get letters in almost every mail call.  I wore my coat most of the time.  Although we got enough briquettes to burn in our stove during the day, the stove did not heat the room completely, and we had to huddle around the stove.  I scorched my coat one night standing too close to the stove.  I had a hole in the front of the skirt from then on, but I didn’t care how it looked, I was lucky to have the coat.

Even the stove in our little office didn’t give us much heat.  Every time someone came in they brought in cold air, and some of them held or left the door open.  I spent a lot of time yelling “close the door.”

One day a guy came in angry and emotional, having all the signs of having reached his limit.  He stood at the door looking around in anger.  He held the door wide open.  I yelled at him “close the door.”  He didn’t do it and instead he ran at me and started to pound me, I stood up to defend myself and soon we were in a fist fight, which was stopped by the other guys.  I never had any more trouble with him.  He was a new prisoner.  Maybe this fight and a little time calmed him down.

November was coming to an end.  Thanksgiving had been just another day.  No one really took much notice.  We had much to be thankful for.  Although we had short supplies, we were getting along.  No one was sick.  Sometimes we were reduced to eight guys sharing one Red Cross box.

I got a hold of a large cardboard box.  I took it back to my room where I made a partition at the head of my bed and at the foot of the bed pressed up against mine.  I also made a shelf at the head of my bed above my head for my things.  I almost had a private room.  I looked on this arrangement with much pleasure.  It was really the only way of being almost alone.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999