And if you didn't smoke you still got them?
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'Oh aye, you could trade them for other things. You could buy stuff with them or save them up to trade.'
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Did you do that? 'No, I used to smoke them! They had millions, some of them, they'd just built it up from nothing, built their business up. They had minders and everything, man, they were racketeers.'
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Minders? 'They had blokes in the camps hanging around them, so if anyone tried anything--oh, they were well organised. We used to get our own parcels. I'm certain we used to get them twice a week, one between two. But when you used to go for them they used to bayonet every tin. They used to stick the bayonet in so you had to eat it---because the climate was that hot. All tinned stuff you had to eat within a couple of days or it would go off.'
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So you'd split it? 'That's it. And then you'd get another parcel another day.'
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Can you remember who you shared with?
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Eeeh, I've forgotten, I'm nearly certain it was the same bloke I was with in Germany'
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This would be Gnr Joe Washington from Warrington, who also ended up in Bad Schmiedeberg in Germany and who had the adjacent Stalag 4B German POW to my father to prove it, 227988.
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'It was. Aye, it was him. We were together all the time and even when we got to Germany we were still together.'
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Was he on the POW photograph?
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'Aye, he belonged...that's the bloke, I thumped him! I forget his
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name now.'
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Was they much arguing about the shares?
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'Oh there was a lot of that. They used to have scales, man, they used to make their own scales.'
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And you were always hungry?
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'Oh aye. Not so bad when you had the parcels you were all right. Used to get a bowl of skilly every day. And you used to get a lump of cheese on a morning. Used to get your skilly and then you had your parcels. They used to have these big beakers and that and you had to line up. The parcels? You used to go to this place for them. But in each section you were in like huts, there was a Sergeant Major in charge of the hut, a hut commander.'
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Can you remember yours?
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'Oh, he was all right, and he had maybe a couple of Sergeants, there was two or three used to run each hut.'
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The guards?
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'You used to just see them standing in the turrets. Used to be a Roll Call twice a day, morning and night.'
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Pte Tom Tunney’s Memories are continued in the
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A Cattle Truck to Stalag 4B section of the site.
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16 DLI HOME
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16 DLI POW HOME
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