Doeberitz POW camp

[jeffdanward]

Further on James Baker, we have now found the attached on the International Red Cross site. It seems to bear out the fact that he did'nt die at Le Cateau. The correct regimental number is shown and battalion. We have managed to translate most it. Disparu can be translated as departing or taken from. H.Baker is his wife Henrietta and they had clearly moved from Hadleigh. Although his parents remained there. Under the dotted line we make it PA 358 14/11 there is private infantry thigh Res. Laz. defeats us possibly residence or location PhilosopherWeg was and still is a street in Kassel Germany. Com 12/12 =12th December when family notified. Following up on the reference PA 358 we get a brief line in German which says Baker James Priv. Inf. Oberschenkel. (thigh). So can anyone please enlighten us with their views on Res. Laz. Grateful for any help

[Stebie9173]

One would imagine that he would be buried at Niederzwehen if he died at Cassel (I think Niederzwehen and Cassel were one and the same as far as POW camps go, though I am not 100% sure). You may be able to find him on a Totenlist (Death list) though there is no reference on his card. I think finding the Totenlists is rather hit and miss at the moment.

Steve.

[MAW]

Laz = Lazarett = Military Hospital

Res Laz = Reserve Lazarett = Reserve Military Hospital

[source: Glossary of abbreviations and acronyms in the lists, ICRC Archives]

Mark

[jeffdanward]

Thanks Mark, just what I wanted. Jeff.

[billwebb]

Pte George Knill 1st Wiltshires from Ross-on-Wye was captured at Le Cateau, went to Doberitz, then Libau then on to Mitau. He died on 30th March 1917 and is buried at Nikolai cemetery Jelgava, Latvia. There is a Hansard report from a question by Col Claude Lowther concerning these prisoners. There is also an article in the Times 1924 about the graves. On George Knill's ICRC details it starts with the cypher K IV 1 (he EK4 referred to above) and on the list there are a lot of dead at this time in the same area.

[Guest Pandorasbox]

I have recently come across my grandfather's pow memorabilia. 

He was a pow in Doberitz from 1914-1918.

I have all three copies of the gazette all bound together in a hardback!

Interesting reading and I'm assuming quite unique.

I really had no idea how things were until I started researching to find out more about the keepsakes.

Amazing people

[randallovich]

Hello, My grandfather, Norman S Pugh, RNVR - was also a POW at Döberitz from 1914 to 1918. I have a photo of him standing with four others - three British and one Russian who is sat in the middle, taken at Döberitz. I would like to know the names of the others. Do you have scanned copies of the gazette you could share? I attached a copy of the photo. My grandfather is on the right.

 

Hope you can help

 

[7Y&LP]

Hello, my grandad was held at Dulman, Getorfd and Gustrow and this is what he wrote about the conditions (apologies to those you have read this before !): 

'

'That finished me as a soldier but before we had been prisoners long I, for one, began to wish that we had made a fight of it, if we had gone under doing it. It would have been better to have died fighting than to have been starved alive. For that is what happened for the next six months. One chap with us was sent to hospital when he became ill. He was  nearly six foot tall. They weighed him there, he weighed only 98 lbs. You can guess we were a lot of scarecrows. We never saw meat nor soap for all that time and the Germans made us work 8 ½ hours every day. We seldom had breakfast. Our dinner was potatoes and swedes or cow cabbage boiled, not many potatoes. We got that when we came off work at four, at five we got a bread ration four square inches made of straw and pototo peels chopped up, no wheat, a drop of imitation coffee made of ground acorns and the red berries that we used to call lagar. Then we used to crawl into our blankets and try to sleep. As well as the lice would let us. It was there that I found out that fleas would shift lice. A new lot of Russians came to the camp after we had been there a few months. At the end of the month all our lice had disappeared and we were infested with fleas.

One comical bit happened during this time. Some Engineers came to do a job and each night before they left they would strip naked and have what we called a chat out, pick out the livestock that is. A chap of ours who was good at drawing made a sketch of a naked German with a mallet in one hand and a flea by the neck in the other. A German officer took a fancy to the drawing and claimed it. On the reverse side of the paper was a sketch of a half-starved German knawing a mangold wurzel. The artist got 14 days in cells for that. In March 1918, we got some food from England and what a glorious feed we had. It came just in time to save our lives for we were nearly all finished and done up. However, from then onwards we began to recover, as the food came fairly regular and by the end of the summer we began to look like human beings again.' 

Edited 1 November , 2017 by 7Y&LP
fat finger syndrom !

[mva]

5 hours ago, 7Y&LP said:

Hello, my grandad was held at Dulman,

 I think it is : Dülmen

[8168barton]

My Great Uncle William Johnson RN was a prisoner at Doberitz.He came home but I was too young to ask him about anything.