Just as a matter of curiosity, why won’t you share the nickname for the toilets on the ship? Although the board has concerns about being safe for work, it’s not really a family site. There are very few restrictions on language, and words like shit and fuck are certainly allowed. Not to mention topics on pan fried semen or men who can fellate themselves.
How did POW settlement work, in theory and especially practice? Was it as simple as a POW refusing repatriation assistance and simply walking out of the gates into the community while his former comrades are piling onto buses and planes for their trip home, or was there an application process, threats of deportation, etc.?
I’m guessing it would be pretty easy to formally emigrate as a former POW if a soldier married a local or had essential work skills that were in dire need, but what about if the desire was more political or economic?
I gather from reading reminiscences by World War 2 POWs, that it was fairly easy to muck about with the German regulations for POWs – largely because there were such great numbers of POWs. Switching-and-swopping of identities, was not hard to accomplish – likewise, just vanishing from the muster-roll (useful in escaping endeavours). Some officer POWs were of a temperament such that enforced idleness for months and years, would drive them mad: they arranged to switch identities with “other ranks”, who took their place in officers’ camp – for the officer initiating the switch, exhausting brute labour was preferable to privileged idleness: plus – if his tastes ran that way – being “out and about” gave some advantages for escape attempts, and / or for sabotaging the German war effort.
Long ago, I had a work colleague who was taken prisoner in 1940, and – he being an “other rank” – spent most of the war doing farm work, of a definitely old-fashioned kind, in the as-was “Polish Corridor” area. He said that things could have been a lot worse: in his POW sojourn, he received much kindness from both Germans and Poles.
The former thread, and its many cross references in others, I remember well in GQ.
Self-fellatio?
ETA: Yup. Before my time: Is It Possible To Give Yourself Oral Sex? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
One of the tunnels in Stalag Luft III at Sagan was actually started from in the lavatory block.
Along with this I read a book once that talked about what it was like to be an allied POW in Switzerland itself.
See Switzerland was neutral and therefore themselves did NOT have to abide by the Geneva conventions so when say a British aircrew landed in Switzerland they were imprisoned just like if they were in Germany itself and same with German aircrews.
Now if any of you know Switzerland you know that different parts of the country are physically and ethnically tied to a surrounding country so if a crew went down on say the German side, well treatment was much worse than say going down on the French side. So on the German side they would often turn them over to the Germans or house them in prison camps while on the French side they put them up in hotels and resorts (which because of the war were empty). Aircraft were often sent to Germany or the Swiss allowed German agents to look over downed planes for evidence of allied technology.
Oh, also allied pow’s in Switzerland did NOT get pow pay scale after release. Only regular pay.
Sadly their seems to be some cases where aircrews figured this out and deliberately landed their planes in Switzerland so they could sit out the war in safety. They caught some crews stuffing suitcases into their planes. This also gave German agents a fully intact plane to study.
Now alot of this changed as the war was ending and it became clear the Germans would lose. The German-Swiss stopped being bad to allied pilots.
What civilians call “toilets” are called “heads” in the USCG and USN. Probably the USMC also.
I knew they are called “heads.” I thought Jim’s Son might have had a raunchier name in mind that he was reluctant to share. Since this site really isn’t family-friendly, I was puzzled by his reluctance.
There would have been the usual bureaucratic processes, which were relatively informal. Most of the cases we hear about would have been precisely where a POW had been working on the same farm, had settled down and become indispensable to the farmer. I think it would essentially have depended on whether an upstanding citizen of some sort would speak up for you and maybe act as a guarantor. There must have come a crunch point where they were given a date for release and repatriation and would then have decided whether or not to ask to stay. I have no idea how many were refused and more or less forcibly repatriated against their will. This was a process lasting for a couple of years, so there would have been time to think about their position.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/german_pows_01.shtml
http://www.radiomarconi.com/marconi/monumento/pow/pows.html
DPs or POWs who had been nationals of the former Soviet Union were in a much more difficult position: the Russians wanted them back, particularly those who had gone over to the Germans, and were threatening not to repatriate Allied POWs who had fallen into their hands at the end of the war. The stories are particularly harrowing in relation to those held on the Continent, where there were forcible repatriations. A fair number of Poles and Ukrainians in the UK were allowed to stay as refugees.
There were quite a high number of ex POW’s allowed to stay after the war; mainly Italians though, as Germans were pretty much disliked. My mother, for example, refused to go to Germany in the late 50’s when my father was posted there, and she was by no means unusual. Italians were treated quite differently and were generally welcomed into the local population. Bear in mind that there was a considerable shortage of young men at that time.