Pat O’Sullivan sketched this view of the interior of the Bad Schmiedeberg work camp dormitory after I traced and made contact with him in 1998.
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Located at 29 Hindenberg Strasse, Bad Schmiedeberg, the dormitory was a converted stable on the lower floor of a house where the local coal merchant ‘Old Mathias’ lived with his daughter, Frau Langer.
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The sleeping accommodation was a simple kind of shelving rather than bunks. Pat has sketched in where the various POWs slept. As can be seen the conditions for the 24 men were cramped to say the least.
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On the upper shelf at the bottom left slept: Davies, Sangster, Woolley, O’Sullivan, Granger and Washington.
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On the lower shelf at bottom left slept: Garbutt, Price, Smith, Chamberlain, Carrick and Mitchell.
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On the upper shelf at top right slept: Green, Akers, Lewis, Tunney, Gent and MacRae.
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On the lower shelf at top right slept: Davey, Rolfe, Britton, Dunster and Hiley. Pat has also marked Akers again here, so we can speculate that this could be the berth of the man he hasn’t marked down, Kennerley.
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For more on these names, see the POW group photograph caption. My father’s lifelong affection for Cockney rhyming slang probably had something to do with the fact that Londoner Georgie Gent had the sleeping berth next to him for almost two years!
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NEXT: a sketch of the external layout of the Bad Schmiedeberg Camp.
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POW HOME
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