Escaped POWs: Aftermath

Factual Questions
1

I haven’t seen this answered in the other threads about POW escapes, so here I am with it.

When Allied POWs escaped from the German camps during World War II and made their way back home to the UK, US, Canada etc. what became of them?

I assume initially they were debriefed about camp conditions, who’s alive in there, what’d you overhear from your jailers, etc. etc.

Then I’m sure they were given medals and paraded around the home front as morale boosters.

All that would take a few weeks. But then what? Were they retired as heroes, or were they reassigned and sent back into the war? Surely at least some of the POWs were motivated by a desire to get back into the fight. Given that, did any POWs get captured a second time? That’d suck!

2

What would be unreal is if a guy got captured, escaped, re-enlisted, got captured and escaped again. THAT would be something.

3

I have a great-uncle who is said to have escaped from a German POW camp twice, but I don’t know the details (not surprisingly, he doesn’t like to talk about it). The first time he was captured, he was in the Polish cavalry – which, as we all know, ceased to exist fairly early in the game. I’m not sure whether he re-enlisted (assuming there WAS anything to re-enlist in – the resistance, maybe?) or was simply caught and identified. Or possibly the double-escape thing is a bit of family urban legend; I admit that I heard most of the story from my mom, who was born after the events in question. Pretty remarkable, though, if true.

4

Polish soldiers and airmen who escaped in the early stages of the war did form units in Britain before D-Day. I think their may have been a Polish brigade or division at some point, and there were certainly all-Polish squadrons in the RAF.

5

The Allies followed a general policy that escapees assisted by the resistance and escape networks would not be returned to combat where they stood a chance of being captured. This policy prevented the resistance networks from being compromised by recaptured escapees.

The policy wasn’t always followed. Chuck Yeager was captured, escaped and returned to combat but it took the intercession of Dwight D. Eisenhower to do so. See:

http://afftc.edwards.af.mil/history/docs_html/people/yeager_biography.html

British Lt. General Richard O’Connor was captured in North Africa in 1941, escaped in 1943 and returned to command VIII Corps in Europe in 1944.

Andrew Warinner

6

And as a bit of interesting trivia- many of the top RAF aces during the Battle of Britain were either Polish or Czech nationals.

7

warinner:

But your quoted biography says Yeager avoided capture and made it back to Allied ground.

That’s different. What I’m asking is what became of Allied fighting men (and women?) who were captured, sent to POW camps, successfully escaped and returned home. Since, surely, at least part of the motivation for escaping would have been to “get back into the war,” how commonly did they go back into combat?

8

I can’t speak to the US forces, but in the UK and Commonwealth, there was in general, no proscription on an escaped POW returning to active duty.

However, all returning escapers were thoroughly debriefed for intelligence purposes, ranging from the circumstances of their capture, how they were interrogated by the Germans, morale of German troops & civilians, conditions in Germany or occupied countries, troop movements they may have seen, factories, etc.

Some returned POWs were prohibited from active service lest they be recaptured: Wing-Commander Basil Embry had killed a German soldier in France during his escape (a most unusual incident: violence against guards was almost unheard of), and so was not allowed to fly over enemy territory. Also banned from “front-line” duty were those who had passed through an “escape line,” or had been in prolonged contact with a resistance movement, in order to lessen the risk of compromising these groups in the event of recapture.

Remember, too, that we are only talking about a couple of hundred men in total: a miniscule percent of those who escaped from a camp actually made a “home run.” I refer here to escapers, as opposed to evaders (those who were never actually captured by the Germans), of whom there were over 2000.

Some of those who returned were very useful as instructors to others on the subject of escape and evasion. I know that several returned POWs in the RAF did a circuit of aerodromes, giving lectures to new aircrew about how to handle yourself if shot down–including avoiding German interrogation tricks.

Some who had been POWs for two or three years would have to take a great deal of training in new aircraft, weapons, etc.: imagine an RAF pilot shot down in December 1939 in a Hampden bomber, returning to service in 1943, with H2S radar, “Gee,” huge Stirling bombers, etc. He’d need a lot of catch-up time!

All returning British POWs were also accessed as to their mental state: captivity could affect men in many different ways, and not all would have been deemed suitable for a return to combat.

Speaking of the Free Poles, Czechs, etc., they formed several RAF squadrons during the Battle of Britain, and fought the Germans with an implacable fury, and understandably so. Here’s some information onCzechs in the RAF, and on the Free Poles during WWII. For comparative purposes, here is a table of nationality of RAF Fighter Command pilotsduring the Battle of Britain.

9

I believe that under the Geneva Convention, if you escape from a POW camp and are returned to combat and recaptured, the enemy can legally kill you as a spy.

10

Do you have a reference for that? To me, it doesn’t make a bit of sense.

11

I found the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which is still in effect, as far as I know, and that bit about recaptured POWs being executable (hmm, is that a real word?) is wrong.

On prisoners who have made good their escape only to be captured again at a later date:

On prisoners who escape but are captured before leaving enemy territory:

Finally…

Hope that clears that up.

12

Commander Cyclops wrote:

Not according to the Geneva Convention of July 27th, 1929:

The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War; August 12, 1949 reiterates the provision:

You may be thinking of the reasoning that any military personnel captured out of uniform can be considered spies and thus punished. This kind of fits with Chapter II, articles 29 - 31 of the Hague Convention of 1907 but not completely. Spies are defined as “when, acting clandestinely or on false pretences, he obtains or endeavours to obtain information in the zone of operations of a belligerent, with the intention of communicating it to the hostile party.” Escaped prisoners are not primarily engaged in in information gathering and in any event are subject to legal proceedings before punishment.

Andrew Warinner