Person

James Fish was born in 1881, the son of Robert Fish and Mary Ann Fish and the youngest of four siblings. By 1911 he had started working as an elementary school teacher and in 1912 signed up for the Volunteer Durham Light Infantry.

After the outbreak of WWI he enlisted quickly, joining the army in September 1914 and receiving a promotion to Acting Lance Corporal the following March. However, he was reported missing on 26 April 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres. Fish had become a prisoner of war. Lance Corporal J. Thomas of the 8th Durham Light Infantry later recalled the incident in which Fish was captured in The Bede magazine. Their battalion was ambushed by a group German soldiers and a number of men had been injured, including Fish, who was shot at close quarters. The bullet ‘ploughed a furrow along the top of his head through the scalp’. Having been rounded up, the men, including the wounded, marched for three days straight to the local station, where a train took them to Munster, Westphalia. It was here that they were placed in Rennbahn, a German POW camp.

Conditions in Rennbahn for the men were mixed. Lance Corporal Thomas recalls that ‘there was no bullying and generally things would not have been so bad if we had had food to eat.’ The diet was indeed monotonous – war bread for breakfast and ‘weak and thin’ soup for both lunch and dinner. Furthermore, Fish would have had to endure twelve hours a day of gruelling work in the local salt mines.

However, the men found ways to occupy and distract themselves, even setting up a stage troupe of prisoners, called the Rennbahn Empire. Members of the group staged performances every Wednesday, with a wide array of titles, including Le Danseur Inconnu and Roll on Blighty! The historian Jonathan Vance has commented that theatre and other kinds of leisure pursuits were a common part of the experience prisoners of war during WWI. In fact, ‘most camps had not only theatres, but libraries and art classes and occupational therapy classes … orchestras in some cases.’ While at Rennbahn, Fish made a collection of photographs of the people and the activities of the camp. These can be viewed online through the catalogue of Durham County Record Office on the website http://www.durhamrecordoffice.org.uk.

Fish returned to England in October 1918. He received a state pension for 39 weeks, worth eight shillings and three pence a week, after his discharge in February 1919, as a result of the injury to his head. Despite this, he was able to return to work as an elementary school teacher and continued to live Northumberland. On 12 May 1919, he married Ada Elizabeth Archbold of Ryton, at the Church of the Holy Cross, Ryton. He died in 1971.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation page about Rennbahn newspapers, printed by Prisoners of War:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rare-pow-camp-newspapers-show-overlooked-ww-i-experience-1.2825091

Scanned copies of the Bede Magazine are available to view on Durham University Special Collections website:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/library/asc/roll/publications/

Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, 20 May 1919

Civil Parish: Durham

Birth date: 09-Oct-1887

Death date: 1971

Armed force/civilian: Army

Residence: Killingworth, Northumberland (1901 census)
Scottsfield Terrace Haltwhistle, Northumberland (1911 census)
School House, Cornhill On Tweed, Northumberland (1914 Attestation Form)

Education: Bede College

Employment: Elementary School Teacher

Family: Parents: Robert Fish (b. 1843), Mary Ann Fish (b. 1851)
Siblings: Ann Fish (b.1874), John Fish (b. 1877), Elizabeth Fish (b. 1879)
Wife: Ada Elizabeth Archbold, married 12 May 1919

Military service:

Pre-war: served with the Volunteer Durham Light Industry (1912-1914)
Attested 23 September 1914
8th Durham Light Industry
Service Number 300537
Private (27 September 1914)
Acting Lance Corporal (27 March 1915)
Reported Missing (26 April 1915)
Returned from Germany (12 October 1918)

Gender: Male

Contributed by Durham County Record Office | Stephen - Durham at War intern