Rosie's War by Rosemary Say

Author:Rosemary Say
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843176466
Publisher: Michael O' Mara Books

PART THREE

Breaking Free

MAY – NOVEMBER 1941

CHAPTER TEN

Vittel: The Model Camp

F or the second time we seemed to have been moved to our prison camp in a hurry. Food was scarce for a while until the Red Cross and our families caught up with us and the all-important parcels began to arrive. It didn’t seem that the authorities had even thought about security, as there were no physical restrictions around the complex of hotels. So, for the first few days we were not allowed out of our building until the German soldiers had installed barricades and barbed wire around the grounds. After that we were able to move about quite freely within the compound, which stretched for a number of acres. But we were not, of course, allowed into the town of Vittel itself.

It would be difficult to imagine two POW camps more dissimilar than Besançon and Vittel. To picture the former, just think of the numerous postwar films about Colditz and the like: dour surroundings, large courtyards, harsh conditions, constant surveillance and the continual presence of lice and other bugs. Vittel, on the other hand, was almost luxurious. We found that there were a number of untended but perfectly adequate tennis courts, albeit without nets. Coming from the bleak, cinder courtyard of Besançon, we were now in the middle of a landscaped park complete with a small pond and swans (this being France, we weren’t allowed to walk on the grass). The rules on parcels, food and jewellery were quite relaxed. Most of us had small rooms which we shared with a few others. There were baths on our floor, although the hot water was erratic and limited. Most importantly, there was proper sanitation at last.

We were constantly reminded, however, that this was a gilded cage: it was a prison camp. The hotels had been closed for a year or so and the carpets and curtains remained mothballed. Everywhere was very crowded and noisy; the army boots that many of us had been given at Besançon had wooden soles that created a constant clatter. It was bitterly cold during the first few weeks of that spring until the weather improved. The heating wasn’t fired up until the autumn.

It soon became clear to us that Vittel was being used by the Germans as a propaganda camp: a model internment area to show the world that the horror stories and violence attributed to German soldiery were untrue. Hence the newsreel cameras at our arrival. Visiting groups of German VIPs were shown around the spacious grounds and we began to feel like show puppets. One of my friends, Madeleine White, complained many years later that people after the war would dismiss her imprisonment with a shrug, saying, ‘Oh, tu étais à Vittel, c’était un paradis.’ Yes, it was better than Besançon but as the war went on the nature of the camp changed. It became a staging post for Jews going to death camps in Eastern Europe.

In the early weeks at Besançon there had been a laxity of discipline.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.