The guards lived in a building just outside the main gate and they raised chickens. Sometimes the birds would wander into the area we could see but not go into. One of the guys got a few kernels of corn and tied them at the end of a long string. He would throw it out near the chickens and slowly pull it back trying to got a chicken to follow. He did this for hours and finally caught one. We heard all the commotion and ran down to see what was going on. He had the chicken tucked under his arm, it was squawking like crazy and he was running in one end of each barracks and out the other with a German guard chasing him. After going through five or six barracks, the chicken was silent and the guard lost them. The guard searched awhile then gave up. Somewhere along the way the chicken had been hidden and some POWs had a chicken dinner that night.
Many of us tried to catch birds, mostly sparrows, which we intended to eat if we could catch them. We put out a cardboard box with one end propped up with a stick and attached was a string that led in the window. We put bread crumbs under the box and took, turns watching from the window. The birds were so fast that they always got away before the box fell. We never got any but we never gave up trying. Another way we passed the time was by laying on our bunks and watching flies light on the ceiling. How do they get their feet on the ceiling? Do they do a loop the loop, half roll or flip? We spent hours arguing about this but we never solved the puzzle.
Another interesting story was about Paul Duncan, a guy in our room who was from Kentucky, where he had been studying to become a physical education teacher. He had been shot down over the Mediterranean Sea and had floated for several days in his life raft near the coast of Italy. When he got to camp with us he was very skinny and shriveled up from being so long in the salt water. He and another boy from the next room got some cement from the guards and a metal pole and built weight lifting equipment. The weights on the ends were tin cans filled with cement. They would exercise for hours each day and it was amazing how he built up his body. He could squat down with his hands an his hips and hop like a frog. The two of them were a sight, hopping around the perimeter of the camp this way. By late summer they could go 3/4 of a mile around the compound in that position. He would do 100 pushups at a time and would lay on a bench with his ankles tied to the end of the bench raised up then touch his elbows to his knees. At one time he did several hundred of those before we made him stop. He was the one who wore just the loin cloth all summer and he would shave all the hair off his legs and body so he could tan all over. He was not in the cooking group that I was, but when I was sick and couldn't eat my share I would give it to him as he was exercising and needed the extra food.