I recently viewed a number of unpublished memoirs and private papers of British soldiers who had taken part in the battle of Crete at the Imperial War Museum reading room. One of these was the Private Papers of Victor Edward Jones (catalogued as documents. 12254), containing his memoirs and a number of other documents. Jones was a gunner in the Royal Artillery, serving in the 27th Searchlight Regiment. His memoirs describe his capture after being left behind during the evacuation from Sphakia, time in temporary camps in Crete, Athens and Salonika, and his day to day life as a Prisoner of War in Germany.

As well as photos of Victor, his friends (seeming referred to collectively as “The Syndicate”) and the troopships he sailed on, the file also contains several drawings, depicting the battle of Crete, life as a prisoner of war and drafts of the front page of POW camp newspapers.

Below is my transcription of the segment of his memoirs covering his experiences in Crete and the Greek mainland.

June 1st 1941

As the sun slowly rose, the patch of illuminated area grew, until the whole of Sparkia Valley was revealed, much as it had been for the previous three days. Groups and clusters of men moved from the centre of the valley where they had been sleeping, and sought refuge in the caves, or under the numerous olive trees, for the coming of daylight heralded a renewal of the German aircraft attacks. Only the long queue in front of the single water source remained. Volunteers were called for and dispatched to the beach to enquire if any rations had arrived during the preceding night, whilst isolated fellows grubbed amongst the ravaged gardens in the valley in a vain search for something edible, although only grass and very little of that now remained. 

The drone of an aircraft became apparent, and anxious eyes scanned the sky.  After a minute or two a German plane flew into sight, heading in the direction of the valley. There were cries of “Keep still” – “Don’t look up” – “Take cover”. The water queue wavered, scattered and silenced as if by magic, as the plane flew slowly overhead. 

Upon the hill behind, sharp bursts of machine-gun fire could be distinguished, punctuated by the heavy thud of a mortar. Slowly the sounds drew nearer until, with a shrill whine, a mortar shell whizzed over our heads, to explode with a resounding crash at the mouth of the valley. At the sound of this, the chattering that was murmuring up and down the valley ceased. After half a dozen or so shells, there was a lull in the firing. The ensuing silence lasted for about 10 minutes at the end of which an English officer made his way to a rock in the centre of the valley. Raising his voice he told us that the island had capitulated and that we were all prisoners. He advised us to take off our steel helmets and pile them and our arms in the centre of the valley. We removed the essential parts from our rifles and threw them away, and then placed our rifles and steel helmets on the ever increasing pile. Two German soldiers, armed with ‘Tommy guns’, appeared, and we were shepherded into an enclosure behind a church. 

At first it was very hard to realise that we were prisoners, and feelings were mixed. Several fellows busied themselves with  burning correspondence, papers, photographs etc, while others obtained permission to get water. A few Australians managed to procure some portions of dead donkey and set about stewing it. 

After an hour or so, we were told to make our way to the road that passed along the mountainside behind the valley. As we filed through the gate of the enclosure, we were given a cursory search, and told that we might get some food that evening, and the 5 day trek back to Kania began.

June 5th – 18th 1941 Skenes Camp

Skenes Camp was originally used by the British for Italian prisoners and when we arrived, there were still numerous traces of its former occupants. It was a piece of ground roughly 100 by 300 yards, enclosed by a single strand barb wire fence. Efforts to escape however, were deterred by two machine gun nests, situated on little hillocks, overlooking the camp. The ground, which was of a very rocky, stony nature, was dotted here and there with flea infested bivouacs and tents improvised of brushwood and canvas. On the left hand side of the gate (outside the wire) were the quarters of the German guards, whilst on the right were three tents that served as a hospital. The latrines were mere holds in the ground, unscreened, and in no way shut off from the rest of the camp. Flies, heat and bad sanitary arrangements soon caused numerous cases of diarrhoea and dysentery to break out, and these two disease spread, unchecked, at a terrifying rate. Rations were very meagre indeed, and after a couple of days, there was a sad lack of firing for cooking. Cigarettes quickly became exhausted and it was a common sight to see the lads plucking olive leaves to roll a cigarette in a piece of newspaper. We were able after a few days to purchase a few vegetables from the Greek villagers, but the prices were prohibitive, and the demand very large, soo only a fortunate few were able to take advantage of this. One or two chaps were caught going through the wire in order to get to the village and get food, and they were punished by being kept on water for 24 hours. A warning was given out that future offenders could, and would, be punished by death. Two chaps who were caught after the warning, were sentenced to be shot, but the Australian Padre intervened and pleaded for them, and they managed to obtain a remission of their sentence. 

It was amazing to see the rapid havoc that bad water and short rations brought about. Cheeks soon hollowed, and bones began to protrude. There were no hairdressing facilities available, and the occupants of the camp soon became a rather fearsome sight. Attacks of dizziness assailed the men when they stood up or walked about. The nights were very cold, and blankets were a rarity. Blistered heels and flea bites rapidly turned to septic sores, and in a very short space of time, the little hospital was filled to overflowing. But in the hospital too, conditions were little better, of medical equipment they had next to nothing, and the food was no different from the main camp. We were all very glad when the day came to leave.

June 20th – 22nd 1941 Athens

Our stay in Athens was only of very short duration, and lasted only a matter of a day or so. On the evening of our arrival, we had our first gifts from the Red Cross, one cigarette a man.

The camp was a disused Greek barracks, with stone walls and floors. Our room when we arrived was three quarters filled with straw, and although we removed and burnt this as soon as possible, the large number of bugs that remained behind made our nights rest a rather unpleasant one. 

Here we came into contact for the first time with the German Ersatz coffee. This was served without milk or sugar, and although rather unpalatable at first, we quickly grew accustomed to it. As a drink, it was a necessity as the water was very bad and we had no means of boiling any, but as a refreshing beverage, it was rather a failure. We also made the acquaintance here of what afterwards received the ignominious title of “Salonika Biscuits”. This was a very hard biscuit about three and a half inches square. It was baked I think from some kind of flour, which I believe to be soya bean flour, although to judge from its extreme toughness I would not be surprised if a certain amount of concrete was also used in the mixing process. When we left the camp, the day following our arrival, we were issued with rations consisting of three of these biscuits and a fairly large piece of cheese. These rations were to last us three days. 

June 25th – July 8th 1941 Salonika

The first Salonika camp was an old Greek barracks and consisted of some twenty one-storied single room buildings. Ours was the smallest of these, and held about thirst men, a sergeant (who composed music which he sang most of the day) and a sergeant major. The two latter were captured in Greece and were already well established when we arrived. Rumours soon became prevalent, and although their authenticity remained undoubted at the time, it is most amusing to recall some. Turkey was most consistently talked about, she entered and left the war at an average of once every twenty four hours. Also had we added up the Russians advance daily, at the end of the week they should have been in Paris. 

The food was very poor in quality, and exceedingly small in quantity, and the greater part of the day was spent in discussing meals past and future – mainly future/ It was attempted to start Physical Training classes as a diversion from the monotony of “lice catching”, but as it required all one’s energy to walk to the parade ground, this idea was quickly dropped. Incidentally the lice were a very unpleasant innovation into our life as a prisoner. They became first attached to us in the cattle trucks during the journey from Athens to Salonika, and grew very rapidly in number. We had nothing with which to combat them as our small stocks of soap had run out long before we even left Crete, and fresh supplies were unobtainable. However, life had its bright moments, we had almost hourly discussions as to how long the war would last, and even the most pessimistic could think of nothing over two months. Every evening some Greek girls assembled in a garden visible from the small window in the rear of our room, and sang. Their favourite song, and ours, was “South of the Border”, which they sang and harmonised to perfection. Every afternoon too, a girl of about seventeen would sit in this garden and read a book. 

The Sergeant Major in charge of our rom conceived the idea that her sole purpose there was to try and import some news to us, and so, believer her to be able to speak French, he would spend a large part of the afternoon holding onto the bars across the little window overlooking the garden and sing – or rather chant, “Mademoiselle, avez-vous de nouvelles?”. Needless to say he never received any reply, and the only response to his efforts were the few unappreciative shouts from the German guards patrolling the barbed wire. 

One night, the camp was searched as a quantity of bread had been stolen from the ration stores. The bread was discovered hidden in the branches of a tree by the parade ground, and as punishment we were kept on the parade ground for over six hours and put on half rations for two days. This punishment was more severe than it sounds, as the sun was exceedingly hot and we could not leave to get water, also our rations were already very small.

Another night, during a thunderstorm, two fellows attempted to escape and were caught. We heard they were shot, but never received any confirmation of this, although it was quite feasible to judge from the harsh treatment meted out by the Germans to the Greeks over trivial offences. 

After we had been at the camp about a week, we were allowed to dispatch our first piece of correspondence since capture, a printed card, notifying our Next of Kin that we were in good health!

On the morning of July 8th we were paraded with our meagre kit and marched about three miles through Salonika to another camp. Here, after standing for about an hour in torrential rain, we were split up into groups of a hundred each, and allowed to find shelter where we could in the buildings of the fresh camp. 

July 8th – August 12th 1941 Camp 11 – Salonkia

Life at the second camp in Salonika was a pretty miserable sort of affair, we were always hungry as the food supplied by the Germans was neither nourishing or filling. When the bread and biscuit ration came into the camp (about once every two or three days) there were always a number of chaps following behind the cart picking up scraps and crumbs that happened to fall out. The meat in the soups was very tough in nature and small in quantity, (the popular fallacy was that it was water buffalo, but it was rather significant that once, when one of the German’s horses died, we had meat three days running).

On one occasion, some old bones from the cookhouse were buried in the refuse heap, and the fact that the same evening they were removed in the hope that the cooks had overlooked something, is some illustration as to how hungry we actually were. A days menu will give some idea of the meagreness of the rations

Breakfast 6.30 2 biscuit, 1/8th loaf of bread, Ersatz coffee (devoid of milk or sugar)

Dinner 12.00 1 ladleful (pint) soup, manufactured from either beans, lentils or rice (incidentally, when the water was drained off, the sediment of bean etc was about 2” deep.)

Tea 4.30 1 ladleful soup (pint) (made with about half the cereal content as the dinner soup, but containing the broken pieces of biscuit left over from the morning issue)

The main amusements in the camp were cards, reading and the inevitable discussion of food. The war was also discussed, fought and won every day, and the so-called “authentic” news was extremely enlightening. The news was accredited to varying sources, ranging from the German guards to the civilian who told a chap who told my friend who told me. The most brazen example, I think, was the fellow who collected a crowd and produced a Greek newspaper from his pocket, proceeding to inform the world at large that Turkey had entered the war, the Russians were only a short distance from Salonika, and the whole German system was collapsing.

The Salonika Market

The “Salonika Market” was the name given to the Exchange Mart that formed daily on the parade ground. It commenced immediately after rations had been drawn in the morning, and apart from the breaks necessary for dinner, tea and check parades, continued until dusk. Almost anything could be bought or sold and the currency was either cigarettes or money. 

The main item on the market was the sale and exchange of biscuits and bread. The 2 biscuit ration in the morning generally started in the running at either two or three cigarettes, but by the evening, the amount of stock had decreased and the hunger increased in proportion so that prices had risen to five or six cigarettes. 

Boots, overcoats, haversacks, razors, belts etc. could all be bought for cigarettes. A few of the chaps went into the town on working parties and managed to buy eggs, biscuits and jam from the civilians, and these, when re-sold in the market, fetched stupendous prices. Most of the selling was done by Cypriots, who quickly cornered the market and forced prices up. It was quite a common sight to see a chap racing across the parade ground with a tin of jam under his arm, with the enraged Cypriot, whose property it was, in hot pursuit. Unfortunately for the pursued, he was sometimes caught, and in one or two cases a knifing episode followed. The main source of revenue among the majority of chaps came from the gambling schools, which were pretty numerous. Crown and Anchor, Sixes and Fives (or Exu Pendi as the Cypriots called it) and One Up, were the main types. The latter was the game that we called Heads and Tails, and was very popular with the Australians. The noise in the market was indescribable, but most prevalent was the Cypriots cry of “How Much George – You speak”.

Escapes

There were several small attempts to escape, but most of them were unsuccessful, but on one occasion a large scale attempt was made. Somebody discovered by accident that one of the manholes in the compound led into a sewer that went underground past the barbed wire entanglements and terminate in some shrubs a hundred yards or so from the main gate. A circle was quickly formed round the manhole, and a game of “one up” was started to cover movements. All through the afternoon and evening, fellows slipped away down the hole. At ten o’clock men were still going down the vent, when a chap was lodged in the narrow channel. He was overcome by the bad air and whilst being helped back, the movements were observed by a guard. A shot was fired, and another of them men who was at that moment emerging from the hole at the other end of the channel attempted to get back into the sewer. Unfortunately, he too was observed, and the guard fired some shots down the drain. There were a number of fellows still in the tunnel, and of these, two were filled and one seriously wounded. Some seventy men had already made their escape before the guards’ discovery, but it was for the main part only the Cypriots who got clear away. The English and Australians were too badly handicapped by their appearance, looks and lack of knowledge of the language, and for the most part, they were picked up in the town. Strangely the Germans did not impose any punishment upon us for this, although we had previously been punished several times for the most trivial offences. After this escape, however, the searchlights were kept burning all night and the guards were very jumpy indeed. To intimidate us, they would amuse themselves at night by firing the machine gun at the walls of the barracks. A few nights after the escaping took place, one of the chaps was going across to the lavatory situated in the middle of the rear parade ground, he was picked up in the search light, and panicking, started to run. The guard immediately shot at him and hit him in the stomach, he died the following day.

The average rate of deaths from disease etc. was three a day. Conditions in the hospital were terrible. There were by no means enough beds or blankets to go round, and the floors wer littered with patients, some of them suffering from pneumonia. Most prevalent among the diseases were septic sores, malaria and dysentry. The medical kit and equipment in the hospital was pitifully small, and the Germans were far from helpful – they even begrudged the patient the necessary hot water with which to bathe the wounds and sores. 

Once when I was visiting my friend who was seriously ill with septic sores, I saw three men die in the short space of half an hour. Their beds were quickly filled, and after the bodies had been take out to the improvised mortuary, the blankets from the beds were handed to someone else.

Life in Salonika was very depressing indeed, I think that during the nine weeks that were spent there, we touched the rock-bottom of endurance. Indeed, several chaps died there through just not having the will to live. 

What the Germans gained by treating us so badly, I do not know, although the rumour that we earned their dislike over Crete may have had a bearing on it.