The Brits

One of the first advantages of this new office was that the next day the same German officer, wearing a warm leather uniform coat anchor length, sent the four of us off under guard to the British camp. We actually marched out of the lager through the vor lager and out into the open. It was a good half hour walk, but we were welcomed like old friends by the officers of this camp. The whole idea for this visit, we were told, was for us to find out what we as officers should do for our camp.

Our guards left us alone to talk, and these new friends told us very little about our duties as officers of the camp. That, they said, we could figure out by ourselves; but as to our duty to our side we were to help try to organize with any degree of reason any efforts of escape some prisoners might have. In fact, have an escape committee to guide any men with escape ideas and learn to space out attempts. We were to keep in mind the Germans were our enemies. They warned that it was easy to even get to like some of them and forget this. We should make every opportunity to delay and hinder if possible what they ordered or did themselves.

They had been in their camp for months now so had received mail and some had even packages from their families. They had a phonograph and had a record of the new musical Carousel. It was beautiful, the first music I’d heard for a long time now.

While I was sitting there, a fellow yelled out my name and came running up to me. He was a guy I went to high school with in Outremont, Quebec. I’d never liked him while at school, but I liked him here. It was a momentary contact with reality, a contact with life before this war.

When the music was over, the guards appeared, and we were marched out of this camp. We never saw these guys again, never heard of anything about them. The visit was like a dream, especially the music. I wondered, as we walked back, if my family knew I was alive. It was March now, and I’d never heard anything from them.

We were allowed to send two post cards and one letter a month to our families, and I had sent my allotments, writing as small as possible and keeping to instructions: nothing about the camp or its location, only about me and my friends. I did think much of home, but it wasn’t my immediate problem any longer. My immediate problem was here and now.

It had been almost four months now since I’d been shot down, and I had at last some toilet articles, not much, but I could get along. I didn’t have a nail file or scissors, nor did anyone else. I used the stove in the barracks to file my finger nails by rubbing them against a rough stone surface, but my toe nails bothered me. Every day when I took a walk around the perimeter of the camp, I kept my eye on the ground looking for a rough stone. Then one day I found an old, rough, metal nail about an inch long, and I picked it up. It served very well for my pedicure and nail file. I managed to keep it a long time.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999