Prisoners of war were, clearly, another set of people with considerable amounts of time on their hands, plus the risk of insanity if something wasn’t found to consume their attention !

POW work is typified, and hence identified as such, by the materials used. Clearly POWs do not have access to shell cases, bullets or any of the normal detritus of war. As a result their raw materials were bones from their food, scraps of material and wood.

Items were usually made with the intention of trading them with their captors for extra food, privileges etc. Typical of this type of work is the carved bone shown in the Catalogue on this site, made by a prisoner at Knockaloe, the military prison on the Isle of Man.

Another classic type is beadwork, often snakes and lizards, made predominantly by Turkish soldiers. For more information of this particular element of POW work I would direct you to the site listed on the ‘Links’ page, David provides far more information and examples than I could hope to here without shamelessly plagiarising his work !!

Reference to POW work is made in the recollections of A B Baker, W.A.A.C., contained in the book “Everyman at War”, published by Purdom in 1930:

“Part of my work had to do with prisoners quartered in a camp near to our own. Those Germans were friendly men. They were clever with their hands, and would give me little carvings which they had made.”