Transcription © F.Coakley , 2019
The following report extracted from TNA FO 383/149 /363399 describes one of the several exchanges of invalid prisoners when in the words of the enclosing cover, cirumstances were "as faulty as they could well be". However the Foreign Office declined any responsibility, blaming any faults on the Home and War Offices. Col W. R. Clark was one of the medical referees who determined the eligibility of civilian internees for repatriation, which came under the Home Office, and would appear to have been there at the invitation of the Home Office to see repatriation in practice. Some of the background was that it was difficult to find civilian vessels for this purpose and the War Office had allowed some civilians to accompany an exchange of invalid Military prisoners. H..M.Hospital Ship St Denis was originally a ferry owned by the Great Eastern Railway Co., of 2570 tons and 331 feet length built on the Clyde in 1908. Originally the S.S. Munich it was employed on the Harwich-Hook of Holland service and was requisitioned at the start of the war, renamed and converted to a hospital ship in which role it served throughout the war - post-war she returned to Railway service but retained her new name..
11th December 1916.
The difficulties and obstructions I met with in conveying a party of repatriated Germans across the North Sea to Holland have been so many and various that it seems well to describe them for the information of the Prisoners of War Department.
First as to the size of the party. We were originally informed that our party
was to number 125 and that no mental cases were to be included. Forty-eight
hours before the party started the number was cut down to 100. I had to make
a hurried visit to Stratford to cut out 25 of the least urgent cases, and yet
when I arrived at the hospital ship "St. Denis", I found they were
expecting a party of 125 interned civilians for repatriation, that the accommodation
on the ship would have been ample for a party of 250 invalid civilians, in addition
to the 100 disabled military men they had and that they had special accommodation
and attendants for 16 mental cases, so could have relieved us of most of the
urgent cases which are so great burden to our English Asylums. A party of 250
including our urgent mental cases would have absolutely relieved the situation
and enabled us to get rid of the whole cases which are now not only blocking
our repatriation lists, but becoming a source of danger in several camps, where
cases of tuberculosis have had to be detained because some-one did not know
what the accommodation on the "St. Denis" actually was.
The hour for our start was doubtful until the very morning of our departure. At 8 p.m. the previous evening, I received a special letter from Mr. Waller telling me to be at Stratford at 9 a.m. on Thursday, the 7th. as the party would start then. (Sent on a telephone message from Stratford repeating one from the War office) At ten minutes past eight, I received a letter from the War Office saying that the start was to be made from Plaistow station, at 2.50 p.m. and the following morning a letter by post from Mr. Adams giving me the same information. Meanwhile I kept in touch by telephone with the Stratford camp, so was able to find out the actual hour of starting and to accompany the party when it left Stratford Had we really started at 9 a.m. as Mr. Waller's letter intimated we should have been able to get well down the river that night and have thus avoided some of the unpleasantness which attended our late arrival at the Hook of Holland on the evening of the 8th instant
The start from Stratford was made punctually, the Tilbury detachment of the Red Cross were at Stratford, and all the arrangements for our transfer were carried out smartly and without a hitch, except for the crowd of hooting and jeering women and children which crowded Carpenter's Road and not only shouted jeered and hissed at the German interned civilians as they emerged from the camp, but also greeted them as they climbed on the tops of the busses with pieces of rotten oranges, cabbage leaves and such like.
I had scarcely believed when I read Zum Busch's last letter from Holland, that this could have occurred, but now I have seen it myself and am sorry to have to record it. The police ought in future to have strict orders not to allow any gathering of people whatsoever in Carpenter's Road, when the German prisoners are to be repatriated and to repress most strictly, all such demonstrations.
On arrival at Plaistow I found that no arrangements had been made for the conveyance by rail of my stretcher cases but fortunately was able to arrange by wire with the Railway Authorities that they should send an empty guards' van in which I was able to convey the more helpless members of the party lying down in their stretchers; while the other stretcher cases had to sit up in a 3rd. class carriage with the Red Cross Orderlies in attendance on them.
The dis-embarktion at Tilbury Dock and the embarkation on the "St Denis" was managed without any difficulty and Captain MacDonald facilitated matters greatly by making his search after we had got on board To my surprise I found that the O.C. Troops on the "St. Denis" had had no official information as to my travelling with the party, and I had therefore to give up to him as his authorisation, the original of the order given me by by Mr. Waller. Its receipt is acknowledged by Captain Hardy in his letter.
As soon as the repatriated civilians were on board we dropped down the river, anchored off Canvey Island for the night, and the following morning as soon as it was light, proceeded on our way, Our passage across was somewhat slow. We were delayed for a time by a floating mine, so I was informed, and it was 6 p.m. before we tied up to the wharf at the Hook. We found on arrival, that the German train containing our wounded for repatriation, which had been announced the end of the previous month to arrive early on the 7th December had pulled into the station punctually to the hour of its announced arrival, and so our wounded had to be kept in the train for [many] hours at the Hook of Holland. Fortunately, thanks to the great kindness of Junker von Loon and the Dutch Red Cross, our men had nothing to complain of during their detention and within two hours of our arrival German military prisoners :and interned civilians were made over without a hitch to the Dutch Red Cross Authorities, v.[vide] receipt attached, and our own military prisoners were on board.
Several of the nursing sisters of the "St. Denis" were shown over the German Red Cross train and reported to us that the breadth of the carriages on the German train, made the beds much more comfortable than those of our trains, while for a similar reason the handling of stretchers is much easier. We were not able to see the train ourselves not because we were not invited to do so, but because the train had moved out of the station before we had finished. It had to be at Aachen at a special time in order that the returning German military prisoners might be in time for the special reception which had been arranged in their honour by the General and Military staff at Aachen
It is very unfortunate that no notice of our arrival was sent to the Dutch Authorities. They had been notified that we were not sailing on the 6th, but no subsequent notification was sent that we had sailed on the 7th. consequently the Dutch Red Cross people had hung about all afternoon waiting for us, and were just giving when we were signalled from the point. The wife of the British Minister of the Hague, who had been down at the Hook all the afternoon had left by the time we arrived and the Dutch Authorities seemed much annoyed by our discourtesy in not notifying our arrival, Worst of all it was impossible for Miss Vulliamy and Junker von Loon to bring down from Rotterdam some invalid civilians who were there awaiting repatriation.
Our return journey was devoid of incident and I was able secure accommodation on the Red Cross train for the repatriated invalid civilians and their attendants.
(Signed) W. R Clark
Clark notes two factors in the the increased number of invalids amongst the interned civilians - physical illness particularly pulmonary tuberculosis (Phthisis) and mental illness, though this latter could also have an underlying physical illness, that of syphilis the symptoms of which were obvious in the first batch of internees and was also the cause of the first internee death excluding those shot in the Douglas 'riot'. Pre WW2 there were no antibiotics capable of tackling TB for which a major vector was aerosol transmission in confined spaces by coughs and sneezes. The crowded huts in many internment camps readily provided a very suitable environment for the spread of the disease. There being no cure other than relying on the body's own immune system, the standard procedure was separation of those infected to some isolation hospital where the usual arrangement was to have ready access to the open air. Such isolation hospitals were built in all four camps at Knockaloe though initially the sick in Camp 1 has had to be placed in tents.
[more TBA]
The records held by the I.C.R.C. (International Red Cross) can provide the
names of those internees repatriated on the 7th December 1916 (the date they
left Stratford Camp) - there are two lists one
of about 75 German repatriations in D.118-11,12 + 13 together with a further
20 or so Austrians in O.59-5 + 6. These internees are listed with their PoWIB
serial number - the few from Douglas camp may be recognised by corresponding
names and a known departure date of 30th October 1916 in the surviving Douglas
Register coupled with a comment in Col Madoc's daily log that 17 internees were
transferred to Stratford for repatriation, though not all made into onto the
St Denis. The non-survival of the corresponding Knockaloe register makes
it considerably more difficult to pick out repatriated internees fom this camp.
Two main cross refernces are however available:
(a) the postwar lists of internees for which the UK government still held some
property which gave the internees' names, PoWIB numbers, the last two camps
where they were held together with their respective camp numbers and the dates
of transfer into these camps,
(b) any prior notification of a transfer into a camp (or external civilian)
hospital giving the name of the camp, the internee's name, PoWIB number and,
post early 1916, their camp number.
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| Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The
Editor Transcription © F.Coakley , 2019 |
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