Huddled together, exposed to the cold morning desert wind, the well-fed English soldiers left only six guards around us. They still wondered what miserable-looking soldiers they had caught. Unshaven for weeks, our weight down 20 to 30 pounds, full of lice, long hair and legs covered with infected skin sores from all the scratching, we must have been a pitiful sight. Except for a few other prisoners, they had taken only patrols as prisoners the last six months. We were the first major group that had surrendered. Those 550 souls on the cold desert floor were sitting, wrapped in their military coats. It took only a few hours until a truck approached with hot tea, and I mean English hot tea with milk. They threw several boxes of cans of Argentine corned beef on the ground and sealed cans filled with dry crackers. We scrambled for the food, and it must have been a sad sight for our guards as we fought for it. All the famous German discipline had flown out the window. A series of trucks picked us up in the afternoon and drove us in the direction of Marsa Matruh, where the Egyptian railroad starts. A train with several boxcars was awaiting us. Dry crackers and corned beef with tea were again our very welcome food. We passed El Alamein where Rommel was stopped on his second advance in late 1942. Soon we entered Alexandria. From the train, with the boxcar doors closed, there was not much to see. During the stops the guards let us at least take care of our physical needs.

On the third day of our captivity we stopped at the outskirts of Cairo. Here, too, trucks were standing ready to pick us up. They took the direction toward the center of Cairo. We wondered what was in store for us. Suddenly the trucks stopped. We had to assemble on the ground in formation six in a row. Our few belongings stayed on the trucks, or "lorries," as the English called them. An army band with musical instruments was standing close by and ready to march ahead of us. This situation seemed unreal. A reception of the newly taken prisoners with music up front? What did they plan to do with us? Show the Egyptian population that they had taken some of Rome's soldiers as prisoners? That was exactly their intent. As we marched six blocks through the streets of Cairo in the middle of the afternoon, people were standing at the curb holding their thumbs up to give a sign that they expected Rommel to get there and end the English rule over Egypt. Eighty percent were very friendly. Others spit in our direction but were prevented by the British guards from getting too close to us. With the band in front of us, we straightened our six-abreast formation, took up a marching step and started singing one of our favorite marching songs to compete with the band. The spectacle lasted only six long blocks. The trucks were already standing at the corner to pick us up again. The caravan went through the middle of town and took us toward the north passing through the famous suburb of Helion, where 20 years before, Europeans, who had come down with tuberculosis, spent the winter months in the warm desert air. In the far distance, as we left the outskirts, we could see the Sphinx with its distinctive head dominating the landscape. We were already at the edge of town when the trucks turned west toward a British Army camp, not more than two miles from the Sphinx. An area of 500 yards was enclosed by a high barbed-wire fence. Sentry towers had been constructed at each corner. Row after row of open tents filled the empty space. We knew that this must be our "home" for now.

We were unloaded at the "delousing" station, a large monster which looked almost like a dismantled steam locomotive. All our clothes had to be bundled up individually and thrown into the big steam-heated kettle. In the meantime we sat on the ground without a stitch of clothes. They handed us several hand clippers and gave us to understand that we were to shave off all our hair, including the pubic hair. Then we took a shower and were sprayed with a large dose of DDT. We forgot our bruised pride when we had to give up all our hair. We stared at each other's strange appearance with our shaved heads. After we slipped back into our still hot, steamy clothes, we became more organized. A search procedure took place through which all prisoners of war had to submit to each time they changed location or even at regular intervals while in the same camp. We called it getting " filzed," meaning going piece by piece through our belongings and taking away anything that was useful to the guards. I have been "filzed" at least 50 times during my five years of captivity. Wristwatches and knives went first. Any cutting instrument came next. One could keep only the bare necessities. A first sergeant of us was appointed as camp commander. We had to settle down as the sun set behind the Sphinx.

The routine of a prisoner's life took over. First, we dug out the desert floor two feet below each tent. The earth was cooler and our heads didn't hit the tent roofs which went straight to the ground and had no side walls. There was enough room for 12 men in each tent. The English quartermaster must have found loads of sacks with rice imported from India, where mice had found a way into the sacks. The first few weeks we had a detail to pick mouse droppings out of the rice. The rice was then cooked with onions and a few pieces of mutton. We had to pick up the meals from the kitchen tent with our German aluminum containers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After one month we discontinued the search for the mouse droppings and cooked the rice the way we got it. I felt that the mouse excrement's were not harmful if the food was adequately cooked. The excrement dissolved completely during cooking and did not affect the taste.

After two months we each received a one-page Red Cross letter which permitted us to inform our next of kin that we were still alive. To kill the long days of idleness, we got hold of some cardboard and made chess boards out of them. We cut our chess figures with homemade scissors and were ready to start endless matches. At least half of us learned the game if we did not know it before. Some of us developed great skill in the game and could play with six players at the same time and win most of the games. Very popular was a race with the large carpenter ants which populated our camp. We dug runways in the sand and started to race the ants by putting a small piece of a cracker at the goal. The smokers among us suffered particularly since there were no cigarettes during the first two months. After several weeks somebody got the idea of starting a choir. We practiced daily for two weeks and had a substantial repertoire of well-known German folk songs and Christmas carols ready for performance. Whenever there were English soldiers outside the barbed-wire area, the choir started a concert for the enemy who seemed to enjoy it. As a reward for the singing, the English would throw half-smoked cigarettes into the compound, where the prisoners carefully re-rolled them in newspaper and smoked. After two months we received the first cigarette ration of one pack of cigarettes. From then on one pack a month was detailed to us. My weight was still around 130 pounds.

Once in a while I got hold of an old newspaper which several prisoners had swiped from the English camp commander's dwelling. They had volunteered to clean the apartment and take care of the flowers. The news we read was electrifying. Rommel was on the march again. In June 1942 he had advanced to Tobruk and had captured one whole South African division with 25000 soldiers.

Then for the first time the Tommies brought some vegetables into our camp. They were only partially dried-up zucchinis, but they were a welcome addition to our rice with onion menus. Some of us made plans to escape and join up with Rommel, but he was still 600 miles away. The steady diet of rice, onions and mutton had taken its toll. Prisoners came down with ulcer like complaints. I indoctrinated two of the affected soldiers on how to simulate an ureter stone attack. I placed a small two-millimeter stone into the left pubic hair area, and demonstrated how a ureter stone patient would feel during an acute attack. I had them prick their finger tip and told them to urinate onto the tip and squeeze a tiny drop of blood out into the urinary stream. I assumed that the English physician or lab technician would stand by and observe the patient during urination. This worked like a charm. When the patient, after several days, still showed blood in the urine, they took a plain pelvic x-ray which showed a stone where I had taped it into the pubic hair. The two patients managed to stay for to two weeks in the hospital with good food and pretty nurses.

July 1, 1942

Rommel had made it to El Alamein. Everybody was talking about this exciting news. The Egyptians who picked up our garbage whispered to us, "Rommel is coming to Egypt!" The discussions and speculations never stopped. Even our guards had became nervous. Would he make it to Cairo? Two days after this news filtered through, we had to gather all our belongings and say good-bye to the Sphinx. We were loaded onto trucks and shipped north to the city of Ismailia next to the Suez Canal. The accommodations were the same. But now the summer heat kept us inside the tents, so we left the sides open to have at least a breeze going through. A busy highway and railroad was next to our camp. We could watch the hundreds of trucks and American Mark IV tanks filing by our camp. Some of us stood at the fence every day and tried to count the vehicles and tanks which passed by. The English Army, driven back by Rommel a second time into Egypt, did not want to take another chance of defeat. Now they had the Americans on their side with their immense amount of capacity for production. We could see the results daily passing by our camp. We knew that Rommel didn't have a similar supply at his disposal. In fact, he came to El Alamein with only two tank divisions and one motorized division. Of the six Italian divisions only one tank division had taken part in the advance. It had cost Rommel the loss of 300 tanks to make it into Egypt, where the English had prepared a strong defense line at El Alamein.

In the distance one could see the silhouettes of the freighters going slowly through the Suez Canal as if they were traveling on land. General Auchinleck was replaced by Montgomery in September 1942. One early morning a column of private cars drove at high speed past our camp. The guards told us later that Churchill was inside one of those automobiles on an inspection tour with his newly appointed general.

Five months after our surrender the first mail arrived through the Red Cross. From my sister Gisela I received a large package which I had to open in front of the guards. It contained a bottle of champagne and a large medical textbook about obstetrics and gynecology. The champagne was confiscated. The book had hundreds of medical illustrations of female anatomy and obstetrics. During the years of my captivity it served me over and over again by distracting the guards whenever we were shaken down going from one camp to another. I could always sneak some of my small but dearest possessions from one pile of clothes to the one which was already inspected. No letter was inside the package. But at least they knew at home that I was alive and somewhere in the Middle East.

A dozen German soldiers who were treated in the British field hospital and transferred later to a Cairo military hospital, showed up in our camp. Some had a missing leg and moved about on crutches; others had made a good recovery from their gunshot wounds. I greeted two of them, whom our doctor had given up because they had been shot through the abdomen and we were too swamped to operate. They had survived the last hours of our surrender and were saved by the English surgeons, whom they could not praise enough.

The Arab population had become very friendly, with Rommel so close. They tried to signal us with their "thumbs up" sign from the outside, indicating their hope that Rommel would soon get to Cairo. The fact that Rommel was at the gates of Egypt must have caused great concern also to the English high command. They decided that is was too hazardous to keep us any longer in Egypt with the Germans on the march. In mid-August the first 250 men of the prisoner compound had to gather their belongings and were sent on the march again. This time the British had thrown some temporary barbed wire around a desert area outside of Suez. We had to camp there in tents and were waiting to be embarked on a ship with unknown destination. There were thousands of Arabs employed around the city of Suez. Most of them unloaded ships and transported the material in trucks toward the English front line. A fast-spreading epidemic of typhus, a disease caused by lice infestation, had occurred among the Arab harbor workers.

While we were idle in the desert waiting for the things to come, a call came from an English doctor for barbers among us. Sensing that this might be connected with some extra food, three of us, including myself, raised our hands. We were brought to a barbed-wire fence enclosure not far from our tents, where 1200 workers were sitting on their heels, naked in the sun with an Arab overseer, armed with a short-handled long leather whip. He swung his whip around the heads of the workers, trying to control any possible revolt. At the entrance of the camp was a "delousing unit" where the clothes of the Arabs were being sterilized. The English Army had rounded up all the harbor workers and brought them to this camp to get rid of their lice. We were each handed a hand clipper and a straight razor with a leather strap for sharpening.

"Shave off all the hair everywhere," the medical officer told us. It took some encouragement of the overseer to move the beginning of the line toward the three German prisoners. We sat in a chair and clipped all the Arab's hair using the razor for the lower parts. Initially the razor went very slow until the guards brought us water and soap. I could not avoid causing some discomfort to the first few victims. It was a dawn-to-dusk job. A hearty lunch and a pack of cigarettes for each of us was a meager reward.