Percy Jackson found a way to sabotage his work at a factory in Alsace.

Well I was a joiner and they put me on a circular saw and I was working away happily until I suddenly realised: ‘I’m working for the enemy!’ It was timber, to go in the dugouts, lining the dugouts. And I thought, ‘I’m helping the enemy!’ So I spoilt a few and they took me off it!

The work could be dangerous, as Alf Bastin explained.

We were at Dobritz and we were going out into the woods there digging up gravel which was required for building purposes in the camp and town. We used to have one of these huge farm carts, fill it with gravel, and it was dragged by about 24 prisoners. So, where we were working there was quite a steep hill down to the exit. And I remember on one occasion we’d started down the hill and the idea was that people holding the ropes would hang on back behind to steady the vehicle, getting out of hand. But unfortunately, something went wrong this particular day and it started away on it’s own. And unfortunately for one poor lad, he lost his life. It went over his head, and that was an awful scene.

For some POWs, their work placements provided respite from strict camp regulations. George Thompson lived on a farm in the Soltau area in 1918.

We had a hut in the farmyard – quite a comfortable hut in the farmyard. And we were fed, of course, in the farm kitchen with the other farm labourers. The job was potatoes, really, that’s why we were there the extra labour for potato picking. They treated us like ordinary people; I mean they didn’t bother about us being prisoners at all. We used to go down to the villages and have a look round. If we had some prisoner of war money – we were paid about a penny a day for working – we’d spend it in the village shop.

When a POW wasn’t working, life in the camp could be pretty dull, as Albert Barker discovered.

There was no football or anything like that. You couldn’t do anything, actually. Later on they got books from England, but we didn’t get many. You’d waste your time. If you were a fit man you went out to work for so many hours a day. But such as us who were in the camp you’d nothing to do, you got fed up with it. It was just a case of you were a prisoner and that was it, you had to make the best of it.

Some prisoners organised learning schemes and orchestras, read books or played games. At William Shipway’s POW camp, there were morale-boosting concerts.

Of course we had the orchestra, as I said, and we got up shows. In which we got up costumes and scenery and so forth, invited the German staff, the German officers and they invited German officers in from the garrison and quite a ‘do’. We did I think it was two shows that I can remember. One of them was called the Raja of –. And the raja had a beauty chorus of officers dressed as ladies, you see. Oriental costumes; heavily made-up.

Escape attempts were fairly common in First World War POW camps. In July 1918, 29 officers left Holzminden prison via a secret tunnel, in one of the most famous escapes of the war. Holzminden inmate Vernon Coombs described the reaction to the breakout.

Do you know, I knew nothing about that tunnel; it was being built for months! I knew nothing about it until after the escape. I don’t know why I didn’t know – I suppose it was very secret. Well, every morning we were paraded and counted and when, after the escape, we paraded, they said there are 29, I think, missing. And that was a great excitement and, of course, pandemonium amongst the Germans. Because the commandant had always prided himself on a camp where no escapes could take place. He was thoroughly deflated and absolutely mad!

For British prisoners, escape was difficult without money, food or the ability to speak German. If they were caught, escapees could be harshly punished. George Cole and his friend tried to leave their camp in 1918.

We went in front camp commandant and this interpreter was interpreting for the German. So he asked if we knew we could be shot for trying to escape. And I don’t know where I got it from, I says, ‘No sir,’ I says, ‘that’s the prisoner’s privilege of trying to escape – we are supposed to escape.’ The interpreter told it to the German, see. And I can remember him giving me a kind of a smile, see, and he spoke back to the interpreter. And he says, ‘He’s going to give you five days in a cell, bread and water.’ So I says, ‘Oh well,’ I says, ‘it’s a soldier’s duty trying to escape, to join his regiment, see.’ Martin kept saying, ‘Be quiet!’ And the German was laughing, like, see.

Allegations of cruelty, neglect and brutality were commonly made by prisoners of war. The POW experience varied – but mistreatment did occur. Hugh Matthews was threatened when he refused to work.

We were ordered to go out to work. And that was a thing I was very much opposed to doing on principal; I never had done any manual work since I was captured because I held that full ranks shouldn’t be forced to work. But however, one morning we fell in at half past 6 in the side road between our barrack blocks in parties of about 50. The guard fell in in front of us, facing us, a very heavy guard – about one file to every two files of prisoners. And we were given the command, right turn, to go and get shovels and things. Well of course, nobody moved. And the sentries were given a very smart and angry order and off came their rifles and they very ostentatiously put one in the spout to start with, closed the bolt and they just stood there waiting for the command to fire. And we were told if we didn’t move at the next command, we should be fired upon. And of course it would just have been a slaughter. So when the ‘recht -’ came, we just ‘recht -’, you see, and shambled off.

British private, H Stone, witnessed maltreatment of other prisoners at his camp.

I saw the first brutality there. These Italian prisoners used to come into our compound; they were not supposed to be in the compound. They used to come in there – they were in a shocking state, all toes sticking out of their boots, rags – and they used to come round to the cookhouse looking for potato peelings. The Germans, if they saw them, used to come over and they used to knock ’em flat – you know, knock ’em flat on the floor and kick ’em out of our compound. I’d never seen any brutality like that – I didn’t realise that our people suffered just the same until later on.

Thomas Painting remembered a fellow POW being punished for complaining about conditions in a letter home.

Discipline was severe and the treatment was bad. Rifleman Turner he wrote home and said he was hungry, he got no food. The Germans come down and got Harry Turner. And tried him for writing home saying he was being starved. And in the camp there was a post four inches square, wood, seven foot high. They put two bricks under his feet, tied him to this post round his arms and waist and legs, took the bricks from underneath his feet and left him to hang there for two hours in a snowstorm. He was nearly dead when they cut him down. That was a punishment for writing home saying he was hungry.

Huge numbers of Germans were also captured during the war, and imprisoned by the Allies. British soldier Clifford Lane had a good rapport with some German prisoners taken on the Western Front in 1918.

We took some German prisoners and I had the job of escorting them down to the battalion headquarters. On the way down, the Germans put up – on the communication trenches – they put up a terrific bombardment. The two or three of us who were escorting these prisoners got them into a dugout, where some of our people actually were, a deep dugout. Of course, we took advantage of these dugouts. These Germans were most comical. One was called Hans, I remember. And we gave them a rum issue and they were laughing – of course, they were glad to get out of it, I suppose. But anyway, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Norman Collins of the Seaforth Highlanders also showed kindness to a captured German.

I remember a German, a young German prisoner, a young German, hopping, coming in with a piece of wood – which no doubt he’d got from the dugout – acting as a crutch. I could speak a few words of German and I just asked him how he felt. And I wasn’t popular because I had him put onto a stretcher and taken back with the British wounded behind the lines. I could see that I wasn’t popular at all for that. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but he was a young fellow; he didn’t look more than 18. He was badly wounded and he couldn’t walk, except hop on this crutch made out of wood, and I suppose I felt sorry for him.

There were, though, instances of British hostility aimed at German POWs. Henry Brunker recalled one he witnessed in Salonika.

We brought in seven German prisoners, you know ,to question them, you know. And Colonel Greenwood looked at one of those Germans – a big German, about 6 foot 3 – big fellow. He looked at this German as good as insult him, you know, in the way. I felt sorry, you know, in a way that he did that. And this German looked at him as though he would have killed him! I thought, ‘If he was free, he’d have killed him’ – he would have!

The war ended in November 1918, but POWs were not immediately released from captivity. George Thompson did not even find out that the war was over until January 1919.

I had a load of potatoes down at the station, the village station, due to be loaded into a truck. And a train pulled up and an Englishman pushed his head out of the train, he says, ‘What the hell are you doing there?’ I says, ‘Working, I work here on a farm.’ He said, ‘Well, the war’s been finished for ages.’ That was the first I knew about it. And then I got, in January, I got a letter from the Pied Piper’s town – Hamlyn – saying there was a railway warrant in it and I had to take the train from Celle to the camp at Hamlyn. And from Hamlyn, we were put on a train the next day and came into Holland. And that was the end of that.

For many POWs, it was months before they returned home. Their families often found that their experiences had changed them. Beatrice Lee’s husband had been badly treated in his POW camp in Germany, after he’d tried to escape.

In 1919, my husband came back – it was on a Sunday evening. And when he came back, he was thinner than me. I had a lot to do for him; he was a sick man, a very sick man. Anyway, I took him to Ireland – Larne – we started off at Larne. And we went to a little quiet place, Ballycastle, thinking it would bring him back to his health. But it was no good.

After spending more than three years as a POW in Germany, Charles Colthup just wanted the familiarities of his home life when he returned to Britain in January 1919.

We arrived out in my village, outside mother and father’s house. It was after midnight when we got out to my village, yes, and everybody was in bed, naturally. Anyway, I went up the steps to our house and tapped the door and called out, ‘I’m home.’ Mother got up and came down and – oh dear – the reunion, well you can guess what it was like. Straight away she lit the fire and put a kettle on – we soon had a cup of tea…

Voices of the First World War is a podcast series that reveals the impact the war had on everyone who lived through it through the stories of the men and women who were there.