Hundreds of young men from Craven were taken prisoner during the First World War. Historian Alan Roberts unveils part two of his feature.

The German officers and men held prisoner at Raikeswood Camp in Skipton would later concede that they had actually been treated very well indeed. Although they frequently complained about the food no-one was found to be undernourished. In fact prisoners held at Colsterdale had eaten roast goose the Christmas before they moved to Skipton, and some had celebrated the Kaiser’s birthday with some fine bottles of port. The enlisted men preferred work on farms in the surrounding area to acting as the officers’ servants. The German officers did not have to work at all.

Hunger was the biggest problem facing British prisoners of war in Germany. This is their story taken from the pages of the Craven Herald in 1918. Conditions could be grim.

Private Herbert Whipp of the Rose and Crown in Coach Street had been captured in April 1918. He never saw the prisoner-of-war camp he was assigned to. Instead he was compelled to unload barges on the canals and to carry munitions. He was always within range of British shells and bombs. Any work which directly helped the German war effort was breaking international agreements, but what else could he do? Food was basic. A loaf of black bread was shared between five men. Dinner was pickled cabbage, and the ‘coffee’ was made from roasted barley.

Private Fred Constantine from Clapham was employed near the front from sunrise to sunset burying German war dead. Food was scarce, and at times he was reduced to foraging for snails and potato peelings.

Private Whipp had slept on the floors of demolished churches, old barns or out in the open. He had not changed his shirt for six months and went unshaven for five. His clothing was an old German uniform which had been dyed black. He had barely any socks left.

Meanwhile millions of food parcels had been sent to Germany by voluntary organisations in Britain to supplement the meagre diet that captured servicemen received. The prisoners’ diet was apparently designed using the emerging science of nutrition to provide them with a daily intake of just 2000 calories. German civilians too experienced severe food shortages, partly due to a British naval blockade, but to them black bread, sauerkraut and raw fish were quite acceptable. Not so for the captured British Tommy, and then there was the watery soup which always seemed to have been diluted down after every meal. The Red Cross parcels were a lifeline for the beleaguered British prisoners, but not everyone received them.

Private John Freeman wrote to his parents that he had neither shoes nor socks, and no prospect of getting any He was loading coke at a pit and found the work to be very hard. Mrs Freeman had sent her son a parcel some time before, but like so many others sent from Britain it had been stolen en route.

A private in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment wrote, ‘I can get a letter here very soon from Blighty. I have got about 50 parcels of different sorts just lately, so I am not short of grub or smokes.’

According to Private James Tweedie of Beech Street, the day-to-day administration of his camp was conducted by sergeants ‘who ruled with a high hand and inflicted brutal punishment for the most trivial offences’.

Private Alf Townsend was wounded in the foot and operated upon in a ‘wonderfully equipped and arranged dugout’. There were however no anaesthetics. He was transferred to a camp in Münster where there was no resort to the brutal treatment that prisoners reported elsewhere. He too was later employed in coal mining and had little to complain about apart from the food. ‘Meat was an absolute nonentity’.

When he was released 20-year-old Private Arnold Jackson from Cononley was told that England was in turmoil and was invited to join the German revolution. The women and children looked emaciated, he said, and many were dying from a lack of proper food. Jackson spoke very highly of the food parcels which the prisoners needed to survive.

Lieutenant Nutter of Barnoldswick, and the only officer in his group, was the target for beatings and other mistreatment when he was captured. Even for officers food in his camp was basic: vegetable soup, potatoes and bread. Many of the officers became so weak that they could barely crawl upstairs. When food parcels began to arrive from Britain, conditions became more tolerable apart from the relentlessly harsh discipline employed in the camp.

The pages of the Craven Herald present a mixed and ultimately highly disturbing picture of the lot that faced British prisoners in Germany. Sadly there were far too many prisoners to mention by name. One wonders how many of the fresh-faced young men illustrated on this page sacrificed their freedom and more in support of their country’s cause.