“So far as I recall Nov. 11th 1918 came and went within the dreary confines of Giessen prisoner-of-war camp, without us having the slightest inkling of what was going on in the ‘free’ world outside… Soon after breakfast we were paraded in groups of around fifty men and marched at a hot pace through the camp to the precincts of one of the most comprehensive delousing stations we had ever come across. Fashioned out of some ancient farm-buildings with high-roofed barns on the fringe of the camp, it was manned by a forbidding horde of untidy German soldiery, garbed in long, off-white short-sleeved gowns, each armed with the oddest collection of ‘toiletry’ gadgets-hair-clippers, scissors, razors (safety and otherwise), scrubbers, hand-brushes, loofahs, sponges, rough-haired towels, huge blocks of evil-smelling ersatz soap, and large canisters of equally evil-smelling ‘disenfectants’.

“Altogether the joint looked like something designed by a demented Heath Robinson, peopled by a gang of mentally disturbed sadists intent on inflicting injury to anything in sight. Furthermore, each ‘torturer’ had a horrible grin on his face. We didn’t like the look of things one bit. But it turned out to be quite a comedy. Suddenly, a giant of a fearsome-looking Prussian guard-type screamed out one word, which we all understood: ‘STRIP’. Then at a signal from the giant, the good-natured torturers descended upon us with something akin to glee—the barbers with their rusty, dull-bladed clippers and shavers first-until, within the swish of a whisker we were reduced to the bald bareness of our birthdays.

“The scene was bizarre in the extreme and not lost on those of us with a sense of the humour. But that was only the beginning. A few shouted words of command from the senior N.C.O.’s and we were ushered shivering with cold, into the main building and shunted through a badly-lit maze of narrow duck-boarded corridors and cubicles where for a full thirty minutes we were drenched alternately with fountains of hot and cold water assaulting us from every angle, steamed with jets of scalding vapours, scraped, soaked, soaped, submerged in cauldrons of slimy oil, again bombarded with torrents of hot water, battered with rough towels, brushed with canvas sacking, finally propelled head-first into a huge bath of soothing water before being disgorged, pink and panting, into a barn-like room-there to be handed back our very own uniforms, now stiff and hot from dry-heat ovens and stinking of ersatz disinfectant which reminded me of the ablutions at Ripon camp on inspection day.

“It may be said that, as we recovered our breath and dressed ourselves in our clean, lice-free uniforms, everybody felt there was a good deal to commend German de-lousing methods. It was the nearest approach to bliss in captivity that we’d ever experienced, and we could but concur when the German orderlies smiled at us and said, ‘Good, Jah?’. We marched back to our billet light of head as well as of foot and empty-bellied, ready to gorge ourselves on our newly-acquired Red Cross parcels.

“As we lounged back on our wire mattresses, replete and satisfied, we were not to know that earlier that November day Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had sent a message to his victorious armies:

“’Hostilities will cease at 11:00 hours today, November 11th. Troops will stand fast on the line reached at that hour which will be reported by wire to advanced Headquarters.’

“And that as a handful of inebriated gunners had thrown a few spare shells – most of them blanks – into the enemy trenches around eleven o’clock, an eerie silence had descended upon the torn and battle-worn fields of Flanders for the first time in four years.

“The war was over, but we – wallowing in our new-found bliss born simply of a good bath and a good meal – knew nothing of it, which is probably as well since I am quite sure that had we known, we would have torn the place to shreds – lock, stock and machine-gun emplacement – just for the hell of it.”

~Private James Brady

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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