The British have 8–9000 prisoners in hand. They are rounding up others, all of whom have stopped fighting, on West Falklands. The total will be well below the 15,000 that the Argentine commander reported. The main problem is not starvation but exposure. They will load as many as 7000 on the Canberra and another ship in order to provide immediate relief from the elements . (source: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XIII, Conflict in the South Atlantic, 1981–1984, Document 351)
What does relief from the elements mean?
Thank you very much.
Well, speaking as a non-Commonwealth native speaker of English… “relief from the elements” would strike me as a phrase from the British dialect rather than the North American one, which would be more inclined to use “shelter from the weather”.
The phrase “the elements” is certainly commonly used in the United States to refer to “weather”, most usually in the context of “exposure to (or protection from) the elements”.
(I, for one, insist on protection from fissile uranium, plutonium, and radon.)
Just vaguely related : it took me a while to understand “exposure” in English texts (as in : “she died from exposure”). In French, there are words for hypothermia, dehydration, etc. but I don’t think we have a single word to cover the concept of “the outdoors will kill you”.
