Hawtin Mundy

Hawtin was brought up in Buckinghamshire and served as an apprentice coach-builder. He was posted to the 5th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiment on the western front in April 1917. On 3 May he was captured by the Germans.

Hawtin Mundy was a prisoner of the Germans at the Domnau PoW camp. Prisoners were made up into working parties then sent out to help farmers, or they provided labour to repair the damage caused by the Russian invasion of 1914. The British soldiers were starving, and dressed in the rags that were all that remained of their uniforms. Then at last their Red Cross parcels arrived.

Some had got two, some had got three – it seemed as though they’d accumulated coming across from England to Berne in Switzerland, then on to Dülmen in Westphalia, then to Heilsberg in East Prussia, then out to the camps in the villages. We collected the parcels and the letters up. We were as excited as like kids at a sunday school party! Everyone had the same in their Red Cross parcel – it didn’t matter if you were a millionaire or a poor labourer’s son. You had six grocery parcels and four bread parcels a month.

Friends would send a parcel, but they didn’t send it themselves, they financed it through the Red Cross. On one occasion, I had one from me mates in the body shop at Wolverton Works. I also had a letter from Lady Leon of Bletchley Park saying: “I shall be your godmother for parcels.” Four of the six parcels I received were marked from Lady Leon.

We had clothing parcels, they were from your regiment. Every three months you were allowed a ‘private’ parcel from your relatives and it stipulated that there mustn’t be food in it. They could send you a brush and comb, or anything other than the routine. We had real leather army shoes and a beautiful blue uniform, very much like the full-dress uniform. We looked real smart and were well fed.

From paupers to kings.