When any country declares war, you always want to believe that you will have a few battles, all with victories and then the enemy surrenders. All with no causalties on our side and completed within a couple of weeks. But unfortunately, war is brutal with losses on both sides and no amount of dreaming is going to change that.
But what happened to those brave soldiers, that when loosing a battle, either got cut off from their battalion or were not quick enough in their retreat? What was life like for them as a typical prisoner of war?
On a whole, looking back, conditions were better in the first world war than in the future second world war for prisoners, however life was still a bitter struggle. At the start of the war, nobody had really thought there would be such vast numbers of prisoners and camps had to therefore be built quickly in order to house the growing number. This meant that sanitary conditions were poor and illness and disease would end up spreading like wildfire - a problem that many prisoners would endure.
As the first soldiers were captured and made prisoner, there were no proper camps. Instead prisoners were made to sleep in tents or had to dig small holes in the ground to keep warm in. As the war progressed, school, barns and other public buildings were commandeered for use as prisoner of war camps. There were several different types of camps.
The first camp prisoners were sent to was Durchgangslager camps. These were temporary camps which housed the prisoners until they were sent to the appropriate camp. This would depend largely on your rank.
Mannschaftslager camps were basic camps the for the lower ranked prisoners. These were made up of basic wooden huts that contained little or no furniture and prisoners were expected to sleep on straw or saw-dust beds.
Officers camps had a much better conditions. These were requisitioned buildings rather than tents or wooden huts. Officers each had more personal space with proper beds. They were not required to work and were exempt from labour. Instead they spent their time playing sports, having debates and reading.
Lastly, the worst camp by far was the Reprisal camps. Prisoners were sent to these camps as a punishment, mostly if they had disobeyed orders or tried to escape. These camps were near the front line and would often be moved as the war progressed. Prisoners were exhausted by the extreme climates as well as the different terrain types. They were expected to rebuild trenches and transport dead bodies and lived on a basic watery soup. The death rate of this type of camp was unsuprisingly very high compared to the other types of camps.
Lower rank prisoners were expected to be labourers and could find themselves working on road and bridge construction, carrying out railway maintainence, mining, quarrying and working on the land. From this, prisoners would earn a small wage but would be paid in camp money to be spent in the camp shop. This ensured that prisoners wouldn't be able to used real money to bribe guards and enable them to escape.
Prisoners were able to write two letters a month. This had a limit of six pages for officers and four pages for lower ranks. This meant that prisoners often felt cut off from the rest of the world and only heard about the war from the propaganda of guards or news from newly captured prisoners.
After the war, upon returning, these prisoners had endured heavy labour, illness and starvation as well as witnessed and been victim to the brutality of their captors. Many of these men suffered with ongoing illnesses for the rest of their lives with many of them too weak to ever work again.
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