3 - Daily life in the camps

Everything that is written here was witnessed by the author in camps 15,113 and 25 in Tonkin in 1951 and 1952.

Life was precarious, prisoners lacked everything that is necessary for Europeans to survive. There was no hygiene, no soap, no washing powder, no clothes to change in, no mosquito nets, no blankets. Vermin multiplied in the dormitories: lice, bugs, flees etc. Nutritional deficiencies, under-nourishment, everything contributed to creating deplorable sanitary conditions. Promiscuity meant that any contagion would spread like wildfire.

Most of the time there were no doctors or medication in the camps. Now, as Giap himself had put it “the jungle causes the Europeans to rot”. Europeans could not survive for a long time in this warm and humid tropical climate, in a place invaded by mosquitoes that are carriers of the malaria germ without constant preventive and curative medication. But it was not available.

So the sanitary conditions were deplorable and therefore the death rate was very high. Disease would spread: jaundice, hepatitis, typhus, beriberi (oedema caused by nutritional and vitamin deficiencies), amoebic dysentery caused by polluted water, malaria that was often pernicious and therefore deadly caused by anopheles (female mosquito), scabies which had gone septic and purulent, Annamese scurf, spirochetosis caused by rat urine (rats proliferated in camps either in the huts’ frameworks or in the cemetery where they would devour corpses that were not buried enough etc.

Since there was no doctor, no diagnosis was made, and without any medication patients could not be helped. They were left with folk remedies: drinking the water the rice had boiled in for its starch (the so-called ‘little soup’) or guava tea. They ate ground charcoal or bran flour that was left over from the milling of paddy (unhulled rice) – since it contains vitamins it is a cure for beriberi - it tastes of dust.

The infirmary was built in a remote area close to the cemetery. It was the antechamber of death, a morgue where the wretched were brought to die once they had reached the point of death when they were scrawny, bloodless, covered in their own excrements and gave off a fetid smell. Red ants would get into their noses and rats would attempt to gnaw their extremities. No one ever wanted to go there because everyone knew that the only way out led to the cemetery. We were helpless and couldn’t be of any assistance, all we could do was try and comfort them.
Sometimes a comrade would die in the dormitory among his fellow prisoners.

People were buried without a coffin or a shroud. The body would be brought rolled up in a old mat after having had his clothes taken away by the other prisoners who were in great need of them. The hole (which was never deep due to the weakness of the gravediggers) was dug by the least exhausted. If the deceased was a Muslim, the body would be laid on the side facing the direction of Mecca, i.e. north-west. There were no services because there were no priests.

Prisoners became down and outs in no time. The gaunt, bearded, dirty, emaciated figures wandered joyless and discouraged, in this village where everything was hostile to them Some would give up and not get up and wash, thus refusing to fight to survive

He who would not stand up would die quickly. Despair was liable to befall all of us.