About Stalag VIIIB

logoThere, before our startled eyes, was the forbidding spectacle of Stalag VIIIB. It was gigantic. In the form of a square, each side measured about half a mile in length, with formidable double-banked barbed-wire fences and sentry boxes on stilts. Inside the perimeter were eight large compounds, four each side of the central roadway, and each wired off from the other. Each compound contained four long single-storey brick built barracks, each accommodating 150/200 men in three teir wooden bunks, with ablutions in the centre…

All that could be seen through the wire was a thick pine forest to the east; a wide open plain to the north and west – away on the horizon, a small settlement could be made out – while many miles away to to the south, a range of hills filled the skyline. Later, I was told that these were the Eulengebirge (Owl Hills) near the frontier with Slovakia…

The barbed wire fences surrounding the camp were formidable. They were about eight feet high and fixed to thick pine logs driven into the ground at intervals of six feet. There were two fences running parallel about five feet apart, and the intervening space was filled with rolls of barbed wire. The gauge of the wire was almost the thickness of a pencil and the barbs had vicious spark spikes. I had not seen wire of this thickness before, nor indeed since.

Eight feet in front of, and running parallel to the inner fence was a trip wire about 15 inches from the ground. To step over this wire without obtaining permission was to invite a bullet from the nearest sentry.

The sentry boxes, fixed on stilts about twenty feet high,were about six feet square, seven feet high and with ridged roofs. The sentries were armed with machine guns and searchlights, and were placed along the fences about one hundred yards apart. At night, the perimeter was floodlit and armed guards, accompanied by alsatian dogs, patrolled outside the fence. They meant to keep us in.