RED CROSS PRAISED

Grey River Argus, 11 May 1943, Page 2

RED CROSS PRAISED

Prisoners from Italy REPORT POOR CAMP RATIONS.

(N.Z.E.F. Official News Service). CAIRO, May 4. Praise for the work of the Red Cross has been the keynote of all conversations with prisoners recently repatriated from Italy. It is a unanimous opinion of these men that without the Red Cross parcels the food position in the prison camps would have been worse than it was. The contents of the parcels incidentally provided a minor worry for the prison authorities who were anxious to conceal these indications of enemy food sufficiency so that the morale of their own men would not suffer. Approximately six or seven pounds was the total weight of one man’s weekly food ration, and according to one Australian the ration did not make up in quality what it lacked in quantity. Another difficulty was the lack of satisfactory cooking facilities, the men being compelled mostly to devise what methods they could for cooking and heating up the additional rations from the Red Cross parcels. Inventive and culinary ingenuity was at a premium. ‘The Italian hospitals were considerably better than the camps in many respects, but here, again, the shortage of food and comforts was apparent, such necessities as soap and tea being virtually unprocurable. The treatment of patients was satisfactory and, at least, the sanitary conditions in the hospitals were a yast improvement on those existing in some of the prison camps. The camps, the men stated, were inevitably hot-beds of rumours, but new batches of prisoners were about the only source of news given full credence. Italian newspapers seen in the camps, hardly mentioned the fall of Tripoli, a brief paragraph in an obscure corner announcing that owing to pressure by the British forces the city had been evacuated. One former prisoner summed up the position: “It seems silly that we should attempt to air our knowledge of conditions in Italy outside the prison camps. We were not there as tourists so we Saw only what they allowed us to see. We seldom spoke to outsiders, bar to an odd Englishspeaking guard at the camps, who were not particularly communicative. It is hard to believe that we are on the outside looking in after being so long on the inside looking out.” Prisoners have been transported to Italy by various means, a few travelled by air but the majority by sea. One corporal who was captured at Sidi Rezegh in 1941, was aboard a prison ship which was torpedoed by a submarine off the coast of Greece with heavy loss of life. The corporal was picked up with other survivors by an escort ship and landed in Greece, where he was taken to a temporary prison camp. The conditions there were bad. A blinded Australian sergeant stated that in the camp at Benghazi there was no clothing or blankets of any description provided, and that the food consisted of ersatz bread and Italian bully beef, often rotten. Dysentery ran riot, in this camp. The sergeant pilot spoke of the conditions at. a small prisoner-of-war camp at Mersa Matruh and said that his most disappointing moment was when he was removed, to a camp further back, as the advancing Eighth Army was only four, hours off.

Happiness and relief were predominating emotions among the returned men. “It all seems so unreal,” remarked a New Zealander, who had been in Italy almost a year and ahalf, “to realise I am not only a free man again, but also that I have prospects of seeing my people again in a short time. Putting it in the plainest way, it is an indescribable relief.”