05-08-2025
RAF prisoners of war played bulldog to boost morale, pictures reveal
Never-before-seen photos taken by a British airman inside a German PoW camp during the Second World War show how the officers kept up morale.
The black and white snaps show that the imprisoned men played games and staged theatre shows to beat the boredom.
One image shows the captured RAF officers playing games of British bulldog while cooped up within the barbed-wire confines.
The playground game was taken so seriously that referees had to adjudicate.
Other snaps reveal theatre productions with PoWs dressed as women to boost morale and alleviate boredom.
The camp's band were also a key part of the entertainment scene as musicians posed with their instruments.
The newly discovered photos were taken by an unknown British PoW at Stalag VIIB, near the village of Lamdorf in south west Poland.
Prisoners were moved there from Stalag Luft III in Sagan, the Great Escape camp, which became overcrowded by 1943.
A PoW later recalled their first impressions of Stalag VIIIB: 'There, 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 on 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-tier 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 the south, a range of hills filled the skyline.'
The album has come to light eight decades on at auctioneers Sworders, of Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, with a £400 estimate.
The vendor, a private collector, bought it from a military fair 15 years ago, and it is being sold alongside a cigarette case which apparently belonged to the same PoW.
The album also contains what is believed to be a previously unseen photo of Winston Churchill inspecting British troops at Cologne in Germany in August 1919 while he was Secretary of State for War.
Mark Wilkinson, head of sales at Sworders, said: 'I always find it fascinating to see the extraordinary work that went into the theatre productions that were produced by the troops during their time in captivity.'
In January 1945, the camp inhabitants were sent on a notorious forced march westwards, which killed many of them.
