The U.S. Army, which was in possession of a large amount of captured German supplies, rarely issued tents to the prisoners, and the vast majority of prisoners in the 'Rheinland Camp' were forced to use the sky as a quilt and the ground as a bed, just like the animals in the pen. The per capita area inside the square was 3-5 square meters, and after a few rainy days, the camp became a quagmire. Without any labor tools, the POWs started to improve their accommodation by themselves, using cutlery and canning boxes as shovels to dig holes in the ground, and using cardboard from food packing boxes as building materials, little by little they gouged out holes in the ground that could shelter them from the wind and rain. These holes are usually 1.5 to 2 meters below the ground surface, and their openings are about half a meter wide. The small holes, which lacked support, were extremely dangerous at night when it rained and often collapsed due to water seepage, resulting in many prisoners being buried alive in the holes. No one has ever counted the number of people who died in this way. Nor has anyone bothered to dig up the dead. After the camp was finally leveled by American bulldozers, the dead became part of the Rhine Valley land forever.
According to statistics, in the four months from April to July 1945, about 40 percent of the prisoners in the "Rhine camp" survived by sleeping in holes in the ground, more than 50 percent slept in the open all the time, and only 6 percent were given tents.
German POWs arriving at Camp Rheinland had no idea that the civilized and humane U.S. Army would house them in such open fields for months, refusing to take off their clothes and hats, believing that they would soon have another place to go. All pride and arrogance had to be thrown away when they realized that here they were going to be put to a test of life and death. The clean and orderly Germans began a life that resembled that of rats and dogs, with prisoner-of-war camps dotted with holes in the ground, filth on the ground and plague.
Squares in the camp were fed with German prisoners in turn, and after one square was filled, the barbed-wire gates of another square were opened ....... The U.S. Army usually did not provide food and water to the newly admitted POWs in the squares for 2-4 days. No one can say what the Americans really want, but this practice has the objective effect: in the fight against hunger and thirst of the prisoners can only reduce all activities to maintain physical fitness, they have neither the energy to escape, nor the energy to make trouble, more importantly, a group of the body has become weak will be in the "Rhine camp" in the first round of survival test. The first round of the "Rheinland camp" will be the first test of survival.
After food and water began to be provided, the POWs realized that supplies were woefully inadequate. A normal person needs a supply of 1,200 calories a day for inactivity and 2,000-3,000 calories for labor. POWs in the "Rheinland camps" received only 400-900 calories of food per day. The food they received consisted mainly of powdered eggs, powdered milk, cookies, chocolate and coffee made in the U.S. Under strict control of the drinking water supply, such food quickly drained the prisoners' bodies of water, and many of them suffered from severe constipation.
There were no washing facilities, no medical equipment, no sterilizers, no medical treatment in the camp, and the treatment and care of the sick and wounded was largely left to the medical staff among the POWs themselves. There was only one simple gutter latrine in each square, and many sick and powerless people who lacked the physical strength to cross the dirty and chaotic crowd to reach the latrines often defecated on their perches, causing the camp's environment to deteriorate day by day, and diseases such as dysentery, typhoid fever, gangrene, and pneumonia began to spread in the camps, creating a final blow to the dying men.
The U.S. Army guarding the camp strictly forbade any contact between the POWs and the outside world, and nearby residents were shot if they provided food to the POWs. The local German administration immediately investigated and even executed any person found to have supplied the POWs. The Swiss Red Cross attempted to provide food, medicine and supplies to the "Rhineland camps", but these were shipped back to Switzerland on Eisenhower's orders after their arrival.