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[Page 21]
The camp of Gustrow was built by the prisoners and was started in 1914, being divided into the North Camp and South Camp. The North Camp was built on a rise in the ground for about one mile, and about two miles from the town of Gustrow; the barracks were built to accommodate about 60 men in 1915. The prisoners started the South Camp which is much better than the Northern portion, and the barracks are built with more convenience and of wood. Each barrack is divided in the centre with moveable wooden bunks, double-deckers, straw mattresses. At each end of the barrack there is a stove fitted. At Gustrow camp in the early days prisoners had to sleep in tents. The Englishmen as usual, came last in everything, and it was impossible for them to get medical attention. The Irish prisoners for a short time were separated from the Englishmen and given good treatment, but owing to their raiding a canteen, they were sent back to the English again. The sanitary arrangments of these camps as I saw them, was good at one time, but on account of the latrines and sulage pits being allowed to go without being cleaned out, there being no convenient place to dispose of the refuse, after about 18 eighteen months the spare ground around the camp became foul.
The Hospitals were very dirty. A man suffering from an infectious disease would be taken away, and his bed left untouched, and perhaps the same day another man would occupy the same bed, suffering only from some minor complaint: the idea of the Germans putting clean men into a filthy bed being done in the hopes of their contracting disease.