With not much fuel, we improvised, by making small forges-- "Kriegie stoves"--out of tin cans that came in the Red Cross parcels. These little units would burn wet straw, paper, wet wood etc. A little fan was fashioned out of tin, and positioned under another can. The fan was propelled by a pulley driven by a larger pulley mounted on a frame made from bed slats. The pulleys were connected and driven by a belt made out of your shoe lace. Anything would burn and produce a reasonably hot fire.

Summer was not bad, but winter was cold. We were given two blankets that were made of poor material with some wood fibers in them. They would not keep you warm, so we put several layers of newspaper in between. It worked fairly well to keep you warm.

Each man was also given one razor blade, every couple of months. It would seem that this would not be enough, even though we only shaved every couple of days and had only cold water to use. However the blades were vastly superior to our American ones, which would usually only last me for two shaves.

The bunks were three-tiered, and each had a mattress of straw--very lumpy and very uncomfortable. I had a middle bunk, and whenever the person above moved, straw chaff and dust would fall all over me. We slept in our clothes which were hardly ever washed, and since we had only cold water for bathing, hardly ever bathed. We were quite fragrant.

Each day started when we had to fall out to be counted, and be compared with our picture to see if anyone had escaped. Since we were always hungry we were not too enththusiastic about it. We usually took a few turns around the perimeter of the camp each day to loosen our muscles.

We were able to follow the progress of the war pretty well as we had an underground radio. We listened to the BBC out of England every night, which was somewhat slanted in favor of the Allies. Everyday, the Germans broadcasted over a camp loudspeaker their own version of the war's progress. We put the two together and pretty well knew what was really going on.