Lieutenant Prael (Prahl)1st Jaegar Regiment 8th Army Corps, Commandant of Latchen Camp during the period of reprisals

"On one occasion a man who was working with me carrying timber fell down with exhaustion about 40 yards from the tent. As the sentry refused me permission to carry the man to the camp, I stepped out from work and asked Lieutenant Prahl if he would allow me to do so. He was extremely angry, staing that he had a son in England, a Prisoner of war, and said he would treat us dogs as the English were treating him........This Lieutenant Prahl was fully aware of all the butalities that were being perpetrated and he encouraged them in every way"

Private C Brown 6700 Ist Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment

National Archives WO 161/100/601

more from this report to follow.

 Private Brown was also sent to Libau from Doeberitz (EK 4) and was moved from Windau to Latchen.

Part 5: Sentries at the Latchen POW camp, Latvia

There are many many examples of cruel treatment of prisoners described in the reports that I have seen.

The sentries for example, often had access to full winter clothing while the British and presumably French and Russian prisoners were made to work with only light clothing and  rags tied round their feet. The POWs were also kept under close observation with the  punishments for any attempted escape being the shooting of fellow POWs.

"Sentries here pure savages, continually butting and striking prisoners; very severely treated. The German officer in charge came nearly every day and ordered sentries, if we did not work to shoot us."

Private Joseph Driscoll

National Archives WO 161/100/361

One of the German Officers whose name crops up in various places in POW reports  is the camp Commandant  and head of reprisal at Latchen who was named as a Lieutenant Prael ( Prahl) from the  Reserve of Artillary and who is described as being  "extremely cruel"

Part 4: Working conditions at Latchen POW camp, Kelsien.

Private Joseph Driscoll one of the Prisoners of War describes the working conditions at Latchen camp:

National Archives WO/161/361

"I was employed to work at the camp for the first day of work. When the men came back they told horrible stories, such as falling in the snow over dead unburied Russians who must have been lying out for weeks and months. Some men were working in the trenches under light gunfire and very often heard the hiss of bullets in the snow. Others were working on ice at the River Aa. This was a line of communication between the German blockhouses and Mitau. Work was really ice breaking in front of the bridge over the Aa. Some of these men had no books, and only rags to wrap round their feet, kept to work from 6 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. With two rests of 20 minutes each at 10 and 1.No food supplied , or at all from 6 to 5 p.m...........

Next day I went to work in the trnches. We were taken to Kelzien, a German Pioneer depot. There we received picks and shovels and were sent to the trenches six or seven kilom. from the camp. These trenches we were making were communication trenches. We were in full view of the Russians , and aways under light Russian gunfire. One man was struck by shrapnel, Shells were bursting 20 yards from the men. Also there was no protection given us against gas. 250 men would go to these trenches each day.........

Other work was what was called the wood party, hardest of all. This was cutting down large wood, cutting up and taking away to road, Always working up to thighs in snow."

Part 3: Conditions at Latchen camp, Feb 25-April 1917 as reported by Private Joseph Driscoll

"The camp was about a mile from Kelsien, at a deserted village called Latchen. Russians were shelling all around us . There was a marquee enclosed within barbed wire. The cavalry ten left us, and our late sentries who came in sledges, took us over. We were stood to attention for an hour before we went into the marquee. The cold was intense, and the men who had been sweating and bleeding so much had the blood frozen inside their boots. We then went into the tent. The camp was about 100 yards by 60, enclosed by barbed wire. The marquee had about two feet of snow and ice as floor. We had to lie in spruce or fir saplings laced together with wire, in layers. We were to be given shavings, but received enough for less than 100 men....about 300 men then got what Germans call dinners, the others had to go without. A great many men on the march had thrown away their blankets and they had to sleep in what they stood in. Inside the tent were some very small stoves, but no fuel was ever supplied, and we therefore could never use them. It was extremely slippery inthe tent because of the ice, the men continually fell and cut themselves. Average temperature was 36 centigrade of frost. The men were overwelmed by the severity of the march. In the morning we found that our boots were frozen into icicles, all shapes , and we had to use our wood shavings to burn  and thus thaw our boots. When we put them on, the ice formed between the sole of the boot and our feet. Barley coffee was supplied that morning but many had to go without. No work was done that day, but parties of 50 men each were employed putting up barbed wire round the camp. This wire was extended to 10 feet high all round"

Private Joseph Driscoll 7314 1st Norfolk Regiment

National Archives WO 161/100/361 page 3057

Joseph's report is one of many taken and recorded later, in Joseph's case the report is dated 18-20th July . The examiner, a JW Campbell of 28 Cavendish Square says of Joseph

"This man was intelligent but somewhat discursive and inclined to rhetoric. I saw no reason for not accepting his evidence

"

Another report of conditions by Company Seargent- Major A Gibb, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in WO 161/100/557 page 3388 supports Joseph's version of events and gives even more detail ( no smoking, washing or drinking water, rations just enough to keep them alive and punishment consisting of being tied up with field telegraph wire to a post.)

A fascinating if shocking report and I have many questions about this period and how some of the  men did manage to survive when so many other died of starvation and the cold. (I have read reports  elsewhere of Russian's  who were frozen)

I would also like to find out more about Lieutenant Prael, The German Commander of Latchen camp.

"1000 British N.C.O's and men sent to Russia in 1916, as a Reprisal for the employment of German Prisoners in France"

The following are exerpts taken from a precis of a statement by Company Sergeant-Major A. Gibb, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who was the Senior 2nd Class W.O. of on party of 1000 British N.C.O's and Men sent to Russia in 1916.

"One thousand N.C.O's and men left DOEBERITZ for Russia on 8th May 1916. At FRANKFORT-AM-ODER another 1000 N.C.O's and men were collected. The 2000 left FRANKFORT for Russia on 11th May 1916. Thereafter, Company Seargent-Major Gibb's statement concerns only one of the four parties or companies into which the men were divided (each 500 strong)

No. 4 Company to which the statement refers was employed in the docks in LIBAU from 14th May 1916 to February 1917. No special complaints are brought forward concerning this period.

On 23rd February the company, strength 500 left LIBAU for MITAU, AND ON THE 25th marched along the frozen River Aa to the village of LATCHEN, NEAR KELZIEN, a distance of 25 kilometers. The escort of the party, a squadron of Uhlans, drove the party along all day in the most brutal manner possible, and only about 80 of the 500 were able to reach LATCHEN in any sort of formation. The remainder were scattered along the route for several kilometers, being thrashed along by the Uhlans by means of lances and whips.

Accomodation at the new camp was one tent, about 70 yards by 7, for all the 500 N.C.O's and men, pitched on a frozen swamp. No fuel for heating the tent, no light, no proper means of obtaining water for cooking or washing, and rations barely sufficient to keep the men alive. No parcels allowed, no smoking; this tent was under Russian shell fire, which, however, was not serious.

Orders were read, stating that the British had been brought to this place as a reprisal for the employment of Germans in France, where they were being ill-treated, starved and made to work under fire. The orders to the guard stated that no mercy was to be shown to the prisoners, every one of whom had assisted to stop the Kaiser's army from reaching Paris..........

.....The working parties were constantly under Russian shell fire, but there was litle rifle and or machine gun fire. The treatment was so brutal that the men soon became mere living seletons, too weak to move about. Nevertheless,they were kicked and beaten out to work morning after morning by the medical feld-webel; their comrades had to help them to walk out , lead them about all day and very often carry them home at night. Hospital accomodation was quite inadequate in the camp and medical comforts or attention almost non-existant. The result, in figures, was that 14 men died at the camp, and eight more in hospital at MITAU, all from exhaustion and starvation except one who was murdered. The death tookplace shortly after the party returned to LIBAU...77 N.C.O's and men lasted out the period out of the total of 500 but had it not been for an improvement in the weather about the end of April, and the receipt at the time of the first consignment of parcels it is doubtful if any would have been left at all. About 20,000 parcels of food from home were collected during this period, nd had they been allowed to be issued to the prisoners, probaby they would have saved all these 23 lives. Instead, they were stopped at MITAU,where they were stored and looted by the Germans, as well as allowed to waste by perishing.......In addition to starvation and exhaustion, frostbite and vermin ravaged the men's bodies.

The camp was broken up on the 10th June 1917, and after a months rest at LIBAU , the party was employed in light work and occupied good quarters until November 1917, when it was sent back to Germany. 276 N.C.Os and men returned of the original strengh of 500 from the front lines to LIBAU. Of the remander most had already been sent back to Germany incapacitated for any other work, some of these for the remainder of their lives"

WO/161/100/557

Private A Skett and HS Carruthers, Prisoners of War (died 6th April1917)

"On 6th April 1917 Private Skett, Coldstream Guards, was shot under the following circumstances. About 20 or 25 men , too weak to go to work, were left in camp in the morning. About 10 a.m. some 10 of them were taken outside by the Germans for fatigue. This consisted in moving the guards and officers' property from the old camp at Latchen to the new one. A hand cart was used for this purpose and the road was deep in mud.They completed one trip in the forenoon, and while returning from a second in the afternoon Private Skett collapsed several times from weakness. At last he was quite incapable of rising, and one of the German sentries went to him, put the muzzle of his rifle close to his breast, and fired, killing Private Skett where he lay. I was not a witness of this. I heard the shot from our tent, and the case was reported to me when the party came in 20 minutes later, bringing the body on the cart. No 645 Lance-Corporal M. Purdon, Gordon Highlanders, was with him at the time. The body of Private Skett lay outside the enclosure for 2 days more. Private Carruthers, 12th London Regiment, who had also been left in that morning too weak to go out and work, died during the 6th April . His body was placed beside that of Private Skett and both covered with a sheet of tin. I buried them both on the morning of the 9th about 100 yards from the hut. They were both simply human skeletons. I saw the wound in Private Skett's body just by the heart"

Alexander Gibb CSM No 6826, 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Scheveningen, Holland

7th February 1818

I found this very sad entry in some documents from the National Archives WO/161/100/557