Pictures of the week: first world war prison camps, by John Ritson

Colonel John Ridley Ritson, commanding officer of the 8th battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, was a prisoner of war for three years. He came from a wealthy mine-owning family – my great-grandfather, Thomas Mordue, and his son, Robert, worked for the family, first as coachman and then as chauffeur, for more than 60 years, and in the 1950s I spent summer holidays at my grandparents’ cottage behind “the big house”. → Photograph: John Ritson

Among the memorabilia they later passed on to me was a collection of glass lantern slides of Ritson’s time as a PoW. → Photograph: John Ritson

The 8th sailed for Boulogne on 20 April 1915. Within five days, they were thrown into the second battle of Ypres, where the Germans first used chlorine gas on a large scale; Ritson was wounded by a shell, captured and sent to a camp in Lower Saxony. → Photograph: John Ritson

Regular soldiers found the place filthy and overcrowded, but officers were treated differently, enjoying a range of leisure and cultural activities; Ritson had a room of his own and was allowed to manage the canteen. → Photograph: John Ritson

He was then sent to Clausthal, a former hotel in the Harz mountains south of Hanover that was reserved for allied officers and their orderlies. → Photograph: John Ritson

It was run by “Mad Harry”, Captain Heinrich Niemeyer, the twin brother of Karl – nicknamed “Milwaukee Bill” – who ran the Holzminden camp in Lower Saxony, where Ritson was also a guest of the kaiser; the brothers had lived in Wisconsin for 17 years until the US joined the war. → Photograph: John Ritson

On his return to England in 1918, Ritson resumed his position as a company director and was appointed commanding officer in 1920. He received an OBE in 1923 and retired from the army, after 33 years of service, in 1926. Photograph: John Ritson