From the News

Dated: April 13, 1916

London, April 9. -- The government committee on the treatment in Germany of British prisoners of war has issued a report on the conditions prevailing in the Wittenberg camp during the typhus epidemic of last year. The report is based on information from the repatriated prisoners, especially from Major Priestly, Captain Vidall and Captain Lauder, of the Army Medical Corps, who were sent to the camp shortly after the a break of the epidemic and who were recently released from Germany. The three officers are the only survivors of six British doctors sent to Wittenberg camp by the Germans, “to take up”, says the report, “the place of duty abandoned by their own medical staff when the presence of typhus manifested itself”.

According to these officers there were 15,000 and sometimes more, prisoners in the camp, which the committee says “is an enormous population for so restricted an area at 10 and a half acres. There were no proper hatinge arrangements and the men were insufficiently clothed, their overcoats haven been taken from them, their are other clothing being in rags. Many had neither boots nor socks. There was an insufficient supply of water and soap, and Major Priestly says he found the men “gaunt, of the peculiar gray pallor, and verminous”.

The supply of food was also insufficient, even in the hospital, until supplies arrived from England. The only provision for personal cleanliness made for the men, was 1 cupful of soft soap issued at intervals of many weeks to a room containing 120. In consequence, the men became increasingly verminous, and that condition, coupled with cold and want of proper nourishment, was undoubtedly the principal inducing cause of the epidemic.

The epidemic broke out in December, 1914. “Thereupon”, says the report, “the Germans staff, military and medical, precipitately left the camp, and henceforth, until August, 1915, no communication was held between the prisoners and their guards except by means of directions shouted from the guards or by officers remaining outside the wire entanglements”.

“All supplies for the men were pushed into the camp over chutes... no medical attention during the whole time was provided by the Germans staff”.

Captain Lauder reports that while in the bungalows there were normally one mattress for three men: in the improvised hospitals there were no mattresses at all. In consequence, there were many typhus patients scattered over the compounds who were determined not to come to the hospital if they could help it.

In one compound he found 50 hidden cases of typhus during the first month. The food ration for each patient was half a roll and half a cup of milk per day. The only soup obtainable came from the camp kitchen, and as it was brought in open wooden tubs it was full of dust and dirt. In truth, the ration was not a ration at all. It was a pretense. It was not even possible to give the patients warm water with their milk.

Four British doctors were infected, and three died. It was then that Major Priestley and Captain Vidal went to the hospital to join Captain Louder, who was down with typhus. Major Priestley says that the patients, alive with vermin, lay so close to one another that he had to stand straddle leg across them to examine them. There was difficulty in obtaining sufficient drugs and dressings for a long time, and extreme bedsores were common. In several cases the toes or the whole foot became gangrenus. The washing of patients was out of the question until a supply of soap was obtained from England. This shortage of necessities was not due to lack of supplies, say the doctors, for on a visit to the town they saw abundant supply of every requisite. Dr. Aschbock, who was in charge of the hospital and who, the committee understood, received the Iron Cross for combating the epidemic.

16 deaths occurred among the British, and the victims were buried outside the camp.

What the prisoners found hardest to bear in the matter of burial were the jeers with which coffins were frequently greeted by the inhabitants of Wittenberg, who stood outside the wire, and were permitted to insult the dead.

After the middle of April the conditions commenced to improve, and with the arrival of warm weather the cases rapidly decreased and by the middle of May all the British were convalescent. Adequate provision was made to deal with any future outbreaks, improvements be effected, according to the committee, as a result of the visits of Ambassador Gerard and members of his staff.

The committee condemned the retention of Doctor Aschbock as head of the camp, and as evidence of his attitude, cite an incident. When one of his staff supported the request of Captain Lauder for medical requisites, he curtly refused the request with the words, “Schweine Englander” (English swine).

The report continues: “the cruelty of the administration of the Wittenberg camp became notorious. Savage dogs were habitually employed to terrorize the prisoners; flogging with a rubber whip was frequent. Men were struck with little or no provocation and tied to posts with hands above their heads for hours”.