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Description: | S. Tresilian 1918 RASTATT
image: The interior of a wooden prisoner-of-war hut. Open windows run the length of the hut on the left side of the
composition. Two groups of British officers sit at tables in front of the windows. From the viewers perspective it is difficult to
determine whether the soldiers are playing cards or merely talking. There is another table in the foreground with a loaf of bread lying on
the edge. Two-tiered wooden bunks line both the far and right hand wall of the hut.
text: J Tresilian 1918 RASTATT
One of the problems of prison life was enforced idleness and many prisoners turned to drawing and writing as a
diversion from the deprivations and boredom of camp life. Tresilian recorded scenes of prison life in two German prison camps where he was
held in 1918. Rastatt, near Karlsruhe, accommodated over 400 British and French officers after the later German offensives. Tresilian
commented that 'at times over 70 officers were crowded into a hut, sleeping in rickety beds, one above another. The table-cloths were very
thin blankets'. He was later transferred to a camp on the Baltic at Kamstigall, near Königsburg in East Prussia. Here the Armistice was
forestalled by the German revolution, their guards taking over the camp from the German officers on 10 November 1918. | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | interior POW British Army Military housing | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Tresilian, Stuart | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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