380 P.O.W. CAMP, FAYID
As Remembered By Peter Matthews
I was posted to 380 POW Camp at Fayid in June 1946. 380 as it was always known lay well back from the Canal, set into the hills with the Big Flea to the North West and the Little Flea to the South. The Main Gate was very impressive, built like a Beau Geste Fort with towers each side of the gate with the Guard Room on the left as you entered. As I recall there were about 20 cages for POW’s with about 400 men to a cage. Each cage had its own POW Officer in command with Cookhouse and Medical Tent staffed by POW’s.
When I arrived, the British Camp Commandant was Lt. Col. Shirley, Oxford & Bucks Lt. Inf. with Major Waller-Wilkinson, G.S.C. as 2nd in command. The prisoners were mainly German and Austrian with some Italians and a few Yugoslavs and even an American from New York. I was attached to the camp police and we were backed up by POW police who assisted the British police on the Main Gate and also patrolled the parimeter wire. This was not to stop POW’s escaping – there was nowhere for them to go – but to keep an eye open for members of the Moslem Brotherhood who used to raid the camp now and again, driving round the perimeter fence in old cars and trucks, firing a few shots and then making off in a cloud of dust. No one ever got hit, in fact no one took much notice. Every day working parties used to go out to various locations round the Bitter Lakes, Abu Sultan, Fanara and Kabritt to name a few, under the command of POW officers and NCO’s. However, they had a habit of trying to smuggle in drinks etc. from their places of work and also, which was much more interesting to the British Gate Police, local girls disguised as POW’s. When you checked in the working parties and happened to notice a 4ft6ins dark skinned POW between two 6ft Panzer Grenadiers your suspicions were aroused, it was a case of “Sieda Bint”.
Behind 380 was a detachment of Royal Engineers, what they ever did no one seemed to know, but one night after a party they managed to get a bulldozer to the top of the Big Flea and there it sat for all to see for about a week.
When I first arrived at Fayid there were two Italian Warships which had been surrendered, anchored in the Bitter Lakes. One day we noticed they had gone and we never found out what had happened to them – Anyone know?
A feature of 380 was the decorative work which the POW’s did with wet sand and stones outside the cages. Mainly pillars with coats of arms of German towns with various symbolic figures