14.2.3 Early Conditions in the Ruhleben Camp
Over the next three weeks prisoners from all parts of Germany streamed into
Berlin but Ruhleben camp was hardly prepared for the influx. The place was
just a disused trotting race-course. It had three grand-stands, a restaurant
known as the ‘tea-house’, a club-house known as the ‘Casino’, residential
quarters and offices for various functionaries, and eleven stable blocks one of
them built of wood and bricks, and the others of brick and concrete. These
stables served as barracks for the prisoners, who were housed both in the
horse-boxes (some of which were still full of dung when they arrived) and in
the lofts above, normally used for storing fodder.
26 The floors of the boxes
and the lofts were made of concrete and the first influx of prisoners had to
sleep here without an adequate provision of straw being laid. That which was
provided was left over from the Russians and not overly clean. Soon however,
straw sacks loosely called ‘mattresses’ were provided and then crude, planked,
iron field bedsteads—three of which could be fitted on top of one-another to
make ‘bunks’ to save space. Each man’s official allowance of bed-clothing was
initially two old horse blankets which stank of the usual, and any other
protection from the cold as winter was setting in had to be provided at the
prisoners’ own expense. As more prisoners arrived there simply weren’t
enough blankets to go around
27 and each prisoner had to relinquish one of
his. Anyone who had brought his own blanket had to surrender both! The
horse boxes were about 12 feet square and into each one six men were packed.
Those in the lofts that ran the length of the stable blocks fared no better being
arranged shoulder to shoulder all around the walls and up and down the
middle. In these spaces designed to accommodate 27 horses, over 300 men
had to live, eat, sleep, wash, and dry their linen on improvised clothes lines
that stretched from beam to beam. They also had to somehow try to get along
with one-another.
Clearly the Germans had completely underestimated the number of prisoners they had to accommodate and men openly mocked their much vaunted
‘Teutonic organizational prowess’. No arrangements at all had been made to
heat the stables, and lighting was grossly inadequate. Such lights as there were
hung in the corridors between the boxes and little penetrated the boxes
themselves making the prisoners’ life during winter one of perpetual twilight.
Washing facilities were primitive. Typically, a barrack had just two cold water
taps and fifteen earthenware bowls, never-the-less prisoners were expected to
parade—washed and dressed—at 6.30 a.m. each day and as the soldiers went
around to wake up the sleepers in the morning, they shouted
28
‘Rouse you
282
D. Sheppard
Over the next three weeks prisoners from all parts of Germany streamed into
Berlin but Ruhleben camp was hardly prepared for the influx. The place was
just a disused trotting race-course. It had three grand-stands, a restaurant
known as the ‘tea-house’, a club-house known as the ‘Casino’, residential
quarters and offices for various functionaries, and eleven stable blocks one of
them built of wood and bricks, and the others of brick and concrete. These
stables served as barracks for the prisoners, who were housed both in the
horse-boxes (some of which were still full of dung when they arrived) and in
the lofts above, normally used for storing fodder.
26 The floors of the boxes
and the lofts were made of concrete and the first influx of prisoners had to
sleep here without an adequate provision of straw being laid. That which was
provided was left over from the Russians and not overly clean. Soon however,
straw sacks loosely called ‘mattresses’ were provided and then crude, planked,
iron field bedsteads—three of which could be fitted on top of one-another to
make ‘bunks’ to save space. Each man’s official allowance of bed-clothing was
initially two old horse blankets which stank of the usual, and any other
protection from the cold as winter was setting in had to be provided at the
prisoners’ own expense. As more prisoners arrived there simply weren’t
enough blankets to go around
27 and each prisoner had to relinquish one of
his. Anyone who had brought his own blanket had to surrender both! The
horse boxes were about 12 feet square and into each one six men were packed.
Those in the lofts that ran the length of the stable blocks fared no better being
arranged shoulder to shoulder all around the walls and up and down the
middle. In these spaces designed to accommodate 27 horses, over 300 men
had to live, eat, sleep, wash, and dry their linen on improvised clothes lines
that stretched from beam to beam. They also had to somehow try to get along
with one-another.
Clearly the Germans had completely underestimated the number of prisoners they had to accommodate and men openly mocked their much vaunted
‘Teutonic organizational prowess’. No arrangements at all had been made to
heat the stables, and lighting was grossly inadequate. Such lights as there were
hung in the corridors between the boxes and little penetrated the boxes
themselves making the prisoners’ life during winter one of perpetual twilight.
Washing facilities were primitive. Typically, a barrack had just two cold water
taps and fifteen earthenware bowls, never-the-less prisoners were expected to
parade—washed and dressed—at 6.30 a.m. each day and as the soldiers went
around to wake up the sleepers in the morning, they shouted
28
‘Rouse you
282
D. Sheppard