Inventive soldiers in lockdown

IT’S amazing what soldiers will think of to prevent boredom.

Tobruk was perhaps one of WWII’S least boring locations though with imposed social isolation its inhabitants devised ways to make the days pass quicker.

The Italian towns along the North African coast actually enjoyed such primitive though passing delights as coffee and gelati shops, but in Tobruk there was nothing but flies.

The devil makes work for idle hands so, as Tobruk’s reluctant garrison counted the days like inmates on death row, someone hatched an idea.

With access to a primitive mimeograph printer, some enterprising Diggers produced a regular news sheet, initially the

Dinkum Oil and later the better known Tobruk Times.

Its publishers relied on the BBC World Service for content but more interestingly German radio propagandists and traitor Lord Haw Haw.

Their printing press inspired a notable piece of bureaucratic time wasting.

They produced a form to be completed daily by units listing the number of flies killed by type in unit lines.

Until their practical joke was discovered they inspired units to outdo each other in flies killed, with the “returns” submitted to its perpetrators for assessment and collation into a combined Tobruk fly report.

As an exercise useful for no other purpose than filling vacant time it served its point.

Another crew needing stimulation were in German Pow camps.

The most notorious, Stalag Luft III in Germany, held incorrigible escapees.

They established gym groups – again back in fashion – choirs – not so much – and amateur theatricals.

More importantly in the POW entertainments were their tunnelling plans.

While the gym classes hopped, stepped and jumped, the choirs warbled and the thespians filled the rooms with sound, deep down these noises masked any subterranean endeavours.

Spoil was scattered around the prison grounds from bags made of old trouser legs.

One has taken a break to write this column, but looking around the yard shows it’s obvious dumping dirt spoil is not as easy as it sounds.

Still, 30 minutes off above ground alternated with 30 minutes underground and we should be under the front fence before you know it.

How many days has it been now?