THE hardships of life as a prisoner of war were outlined in graphic detail by a soldier who was recovering at his mother's home on Walney Island a century ago.

The remarkable story of survival against the odds was told by Pte Joseph Wild in the Barrow News of Saturday, September 29 in 1917.

He was with his mum at 16 Beech Crescent after being away from Barrow for three years - two of them in a German camp where he had experiences grim conditions and acts worthy of the modern title of "war crimes".

Pte Wild served with the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and before the war had been working in an Oldham textile factory.

He was in France from November 1914 and was taken prisoner on December 22 at La Bassee and sent to Lille.

The article noted: "The railway journey, on a slow train, took two days and for the first three days he and his comrades did not receive a morsel of food."

He told the Barrow News: "We were absolutely starving.

"The French people at Lille showed us great kindness and tried to throw us cigarettes and chocolates but the Germans pushed them back very roughly.

"We were at Lille two days and were given some vegetable soup but it was terribly sour and the bread we got was very black and nasty.

"We set off from Lille on Christmas morning at six o'clock and after three days' journey reached the camp at Wittenberg, in Prussia.

"At one station on the way - Bitterfield - we stopped for refreshments but we did not get any.

"The Sisters of Mercy came round with water in wooden buckets and we had to break the ice before we could get a drink.

"Some of our men were fortunate to get a drink but others had the water thrown in their faces by these so-called sisters or Red Cross nurses, some of whom even spat in our faces.

"I could not have believed such conduct possible from women if I had not seen it.

"The Germn soldiers simply stood by and laughed at them and the nurses seemed to do it to please them.

"Some of these Red Cross nurses treated the wounded worse than they treated the unwounded.

"We arrived at Wittenberg on the 28th Deccember and got warm reception with bricks from the civilians and bayonets and swords from the soldiery.

"The majority of our men were wounded and some of them were struck with bricks, others were injured by sharp bayonet thrusts and the cowards even used the butt-end of their rifles on us.

"We did absolutely nothing to provoke such treatment.

"There were about 150 of us altogether, including Northamptons, Suffolks and Loyal North Lancashires.

"We were put into a compound, where there were some Highland Light Infantry.

"They brought us food from the cook-house but it ws so bad that we could not eat it.

"It was cabbage boiled in vinegar.

"We also got a loaf of vile bread between four men.

"Then we got into the barracks and were there a fortnight when typhus fever and spotted fever broke out.

"Men were dying in considerable numbers daily and we were burying them three in a coffin.

"The fever lasted nine months and we never had a German near us all that time.

"We were isolate and had to do all we could for ourseve.

"I escaped the fever but suffered fromthe dysentry.

"We had five English doctors - a major, two captains and two lieutenants - who came to us towards the end of March.

"The major and three of the other doctors died from typhus.

"Captain Priestley and Captain Vadal survived and are now in England.

"Captain Vadal got the Order of St John conferred on him for the fine work he did in stamping out the disease.

"The German sentries used to fire on the prisoners and we had in our camp about 30 killed in this way, chiefly Russians and Belgians and a few French but no English, although I believe it was the English they intended to shoot.

"When the fever was finished the, the Germans came round for working parties.

"The English would not go at first and they used to put us in solitary confinement for seven or 14 days for refusing.

"After that we went to work for 3d a day - 10 hours a day – in the ironworks.

"We were treated shamefully and had no food except pieces of thick bread.

"In November 1915, the food parcels started coming from England and that made things a little better.

"Plenty of our food parcels were confiscated, supposed to have gone bad.

"The Russians were being tied up almost daily for nothing at all.

"They were strapped to a post with their hands tied above their heads.

"A brick was placed for them to stand on and then kicked away when they were fastened, and so they were hanging by the wrists.

"there was also barbed wire on the post so that if they wriggled they cut themselves.

"They did not do this with the English but they used to set wolf dogs on us, very savage beats and we used to jump on our beds to escape them.

"The Germans seemed to take great pleasure in these barbarities.

"Our men did not always take these things lying down but they had to suffer for any efforts at retaliation.

"On Christmas Day, 1915, Private Holt, of the Loyal North Lancashires, received 15 bayonet wounds and a sword wound because he threw two Germans on the barbed wire for setting dogs on him.

"He suffered shamefully and it was not expected he would live, but he was still alive at Wittenberg when I left.

"Captain Vadal and Captain Priestley saved his life by their treatment.

"He could have died for all the Germans cared.

"I afterwards worked for three months on the railway at Trienbritzen.

"The Germans at that tie were starving themselves and when we put pieces of mouldy bread outside our barrack door they would pick it up and eat it.

"On the 15th August, 1916, when in hospital, I saw the sight of my life.

"This was the blowing up of German munition works about two miles from camp.

"That was the second biggest ammunition factory in Germany and there were 800 lives lost, including many women and girls.

"It was like an earthquake and every window in our camp was shattered."

He was sent to neutral Switzerland on December 11 in 1916.

Pte Wild said: "It was like stepping out of Hell into Heaven."

They were greeted with cigarettes, flowers and chocolates.

Pte Wild arrived back in England on September 13 and was discharged from the army due to lung damage caused by the harsh treatment in the prison camp.

He siad that during the nine months of the fever in the camp he had been unable to write home.

The article noted: "They had no soap during all that period and had to wash themselves in water and sand or clay.

"The same with their shirts.

"In fact, he added, many of the men were without shirts as they had got worn out and many were without boots, in what was one of the severest winters he had experienced.

"Being unable to get cigarettes, the prisoners used to make substitutes from coffee grounds and the bark of tree stumps.

"The men often eat the bark."

Pte Wild said: "I have eaten pounds of it myself as the soup they gave us would not keep a mouse alive.

"It was made of skins of vegetables and rotten fruit.

"If it were not for the food coming from England, I would not give the strongest British prisoner three months to live."