While the Gestapo flexed their muscles( they were put in charge of all prisoners after the Great Escape, however they never took full control, but for the most part left the Luftwaffe to continue to be responsible for their charges, only intervening on occasion), the POW,s managed to let their captors know they were not going to quietly sit and accept their orders without a fight. In fact, the Germans considered the airmen to be many times more troublesome than army pow,s, and segregated them whenever possible
Two instances of the humiliation imparted by the prisoners come to mind; one perpetrated by a single prisoner, one in which Dad participated in a group.
In the first instance, an opportunistic pow actually managed to steal the trousers of the Gestapo officer conducting a search! Apparently, the officer got his trousers wet, and took them off to dry. They were pinched, and the Germans went crazy and tore the camp apart searching for them, unsuccessfully as it turn out .This episode was chronicled in sketches made by a pow, in a book called 'Handle With Care', about 60 or 70 pages of sketches of camp life in Hydekrug, Thorn Poland, and Fallingbostle. Amazingly, these sketches were carried by the artist throughout the forced evacuation of these camps. I would have liked to have included this sketch in this post; however I did some home renovations several years ago and put my copy in a safe place-too safe it appears as now I cannot locate it. Perhaps another reader might oblige and post it-it show a trouserless officer addressing a German soldier, who is trying unsuccessfully to hide a snicker behind his hand, saying 'Well, what are you staring at' as a single figure is running in the distance, pant flapping in the breeze.
In the second case, again the Gestapo called a snap search of the camp. The prisoners were confined to their barracks; in Dad's case it was to the large tent holding about 150 men. A guard was posted at the window flap, facing out to the camp. The pow,s started a game to see who could sneak up behind him and touch the rifle without the guard noticing. It soon escalated to dropping debris down the rifle: wadded paper, sand, even a lit cigarette. The final topping was a dandelion placed in the muzzle of the rifle.
This was ok until the search was over, and an officer came to collect the men. He noticed the flower, snatched it out of the rifle, and practically shoved it up the guards nose, screaming at him. Then he noticed the cigarette smoke wafting out of the rifle, and lost it. I,m not sure if the officer snatched the rifle from the guard, or ordered him point the gun down; in any case with each shake more and more debris fell out. Both the prisoners and guard feared he was going to be shot on the spot, but after a whole lot of screaming, the officer sent him off to a fate unknown.