Caring on the Home Front - Volunteer memories from World War Two

Stories » Resource Library » JWO Parcels

JWO Parcels

---

• Prisoners of War often described the rations they received in camps as being monotonous and inadequate.
• The JWO helped by sending 6 different types of food parcel, both to bring POWs ’ standards up to a better level and to relieve the boredom of a camp diet.

• The six types of parcel all contained cheese, condensed milk, sugar, biscuits, jam or syrup, tea, chocolate, fish, butter or margarine, cold meat, dried or tinned fruit or puddings, and oatmeal or rolled oats

A British Red Cross Nurse showing the contents of a food parcel

Stringing parcels in a JWO packing centre

• As well as three or more items from the following list: bacon, vegetables, condiments, sausages, cocoa, dried eggs, sweets.
• The need for these food parcels is made clear in this story, which describes the camp diet: “At no camp in my experience did they serve any sort of ‘knife and fork meal’ at any period of the day. Soup…was the nearest to a dinner they provided and the type of soup it was can be gathered from our general term for it – ‘Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life’.[It] included ‘Sauerkraut Soup’ (highly laxative and vilely vinegary), ‘Celluloid Soup’, ‘Mock Mangelwurzel’ (square, fibrous chunks of cattle food), ‘Fish Soup’ (made from stinking fish-heads), and ‘Caterpillar Soup’. “

• 20 million parcels were sent over the course of the war, from 24 packing centres. A large number of the people who worked in these centres were volunteers. In 1943, out of a staff of 2,700, four-fifths worked without payment. This work was heavy, tiring and carried on throughout periods of intense air raids.