There were one or two concert parties formed, which were allowed to tour around and visit the huts until "lights out", which was about 8pm each night. There was also a clever system of play-reading, called Radio Plays, that were put on by erecting a hessian screen "box" in the middle of a hut, behind which the readers would recite their parts, providing much the same effect as we would have had with a real radio play.
A camp "Wall Newspaper" was produced at regular intervals by some inspired colleagues from another part of the Stalag. Using Red Cross wrapping paper, and any other material they could scrounge, the newspaper was laboriously and beautifully handwritten, and illustrated with great talent. It was pinned or pasted onto plywood boards - again from the Red Cross packing cases in which our parcels were delivered - and taken round in sequence to the huts of the English speaking prisoners. It would remain for a day or two in each hut, before being carried on to the next. Of course, the "news" was carefully prepared, to avoid any wrathful censoring by the Germans. Much of it was very innocuous, consisting of information concerning various prisoners, usually just arrived, their home towns, how they had been shot down, etc. Care was also exercised not to give away any military secrets or information that could be useful to the enemy.
Shortly after arrival at Muhlberg, I struck up a close friendship with George Lloyd, previously mentioned, who had been a navigator in Bomber Command. Shot down over Holland in about August 1943, he had been hidden away by Dutch patriots for 3 months. On the very eve of the day he was to be smuggled across the Channel back to England, his hosts had been betrayed, and were no doubt later executed. George went through the usual routine of being threatened with death as a spy, before being sent to the interrogation centre where we first met. George's home was 23 Aquinas Street, Waterloo - an inner suburb of London. Recently married, his wife was expecting their first child when he was shot down. He had much to think about during his captivity.
Early on he proposed that we two escape as soon as possible. He made a jacket from an old, grey blanket he had acquired, I think, from an Italian prisoner by swapping some of his Red Cross food for it. This, together with a few tins of food we were able to save from our parcels and a rudimentary map, were stored through a hole in the ceiling just above our bunks.
Air Force prisoners were rather more stringently guarded than others. The Germans rightly reckoned that we were more likely to escape, or to cause trouble, than other prisoners - and this was correct! Although our hut full of Air Force personnel of various categories was well mixed with the Army, and not far from the Russian prisoners. This was mainly because the camp had become so full. Most of the Air Force, and particularly the Australian Air Crew, were billeted in a "camp within a camp". Their compound was well inside the main camp, and was itself surrounded by additional barbed wire fencing.
The Air Force boys were regularly harassed by the German guards. At short notice, they were often turned out of their huts, which were thoroughly searched and often vandalised by the spiteful "goons" as we called the guards. One or two gifted lads made a radio, most ingeniously, from scrounged parts and various bits of scrap. We had news regularly from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). The news broadcasts were listened to very stealthily and carefully, for a few minutes every evening at 9pm, and the set returned to its hiding place - a hole in the ground in front of the main door of one of the huts. Attempts were made by the Goons to find the radio. They knew darned well that it existed, and on one occasion they came very close to finding it, but their attempts always ended in failure.
Captured soldiers below officer rank were made to work and working parties were always being formed within the camp, to be sent out at regular intervals wherever the Germans required some slave labour. For obvious reasons, as stated, the airmen aircrew were never allowed out of the main camp. From time to time, a few airmen managed to swap places with the soldiers detailed to be sent out. It was easier to escape from a small working party, with working commitments during the day, than to get out of the main prison camp, surrounded as it was by elaborate barbed wire fences, patrolled by guards and illuminated at night with roving searchlights.
In March 1944, George and I made contact with a British Army Warrant Officer, given the task of forming up the working parties from the names of soldiers selected by the Germans. We were introduced to two soldiers who felt they would rather stagnate in Stalag IVB than be made to work for the rest of the war. During the day, we briefed each other on our personal histories, names, ranks and numbers, etc. Before "lights out", George and I went to the soldiers' huts, having assumed their identities, and they went to ours.
George Lloyd became Gunner Sydney Oliver, and I became Fusilier James Leslie, an Irish soldier, of 74 Great William O'Brien Street, Cork, in the Irish Free State!
