considering the amenities of a German POW camp, and a Soviet concentration camp..... I will settle for dull
When I was a young man, I had a friend who had experienced the pleasure of being a POW in a German prison camp for almost four years after his bomber was shot down early in the war. He often told me stories of the time he spent in the German camp and they usually were very funny.
Each week, a horse drawn wagon would appear in the camp with a large wooden barrel, a small engine, a long hose, and a tall pipe mounted on the wagon. The prisoners called it the "honey wagon". The contraption would pull up to the toilet pits and drop the hose into the pits, One of the Germans on the wagon would shovel some of the waste from the pit into the fire box of the engine. The waste would produce methane gas which would rise into the firing chamber of the engine. One of the Germans would then poke a long stick with burning cloth on one end into the open waste door of the engine. The resulting explosion would cause the engine to start running. As the waste warmed up, the engine would run better.
As new guests would arrive at the camp, it was an initiation for the old guests to invite the new guests to witness the pumping of the pits. The old guests would encourage the new guests to witness the process very close to the wagon because the first explosion and subsequent backfires of the engine would cause huge amounts of waste to rise through exhaust pipe at high speed resulting in a rain of poop on everyone within fifty feet of the wagon.
They also made a sport of taking care of the officers. Many officers upon arrival as new guests assumed they would be afforded the same privileges they enjoyed before they were captured. They usually expected better food, better quarters, someone to assist them in their daily routines. The older NCO's enjoyed making their lives miserable. The officers who realized quickly that everyone was in the same boat as other guests did okay, but the ones who insisted their rank earned special privileges had a rough time.
Near the end of the war, most of the local Germans who had been guards at the camp had been sent to fight at the front. It left only old men and children serving as guards. It was a normal routine for the guests to line up each morning and march through the small German town to the farms for work. Early in the war, the guards were heavily armed and would shoot any guest who tried to escape. Near the end of the war, the guards were so old or small they couldn't carry their weapons. The guests would march through town to the farms carrying the loaded weapons of the guards and helping the guards make the trip each day.
txted
