Sketches by Gnr George FW Cox
The featured sketches come from a collection of 24 in our archive, drawn by Gunner George F.W. Cox during his time as a prisoner of war. He was captured in Tunisia in April 1943—just weeks before the German surrender in North Africa.
Dated between February and March 1944, Gunner Cox’s drawings offer a glimpse into the hardships of camp life. They depict the restricted diet and the bare, often crowded, living conditions. One, titled Dreamland, imagines comforts from home—a dog, an armchair, a warm bed, a fireplace, a cinema, and a girlfriend or wife. Another, Those First Days, conveys the despair of becoming a prisoner. His work also captures the monotony of POW life and the ways prisoners sought to overcome it.
One sketch in particular, The Concert Party, shows detailed preparations for a prisoner-led entertainment event, giving a sense of how men like Gunner Cox found moments of relief through creativity and community.
While we don’t know much about his personal story, several of Gunner Cox’s sketches are labelled with locations, confirming he spent time in both Lamsdorf and Thorn (Toruń) prison camps in Poland. One, titled One End of the Cattle Truck, Or, British NCOs in Transit, likely shows his movement between the two camps in March 1944.
In the final months of the war, Allied prisoners—particularly those in eastern camps like Lamsdorf and Thorn—were forced to march westward as the Germans tried to prevent their liberation by the advancing Soviet army. These marches, made during a bitterly cold January and February with inadequate clothing and little food, claimed many lives.
We do know that Gunner Cox survived the war. His sketches offer a vivid, personal insight into the experiences of British soldiers in German POW camps—often more powerfully than written records.