Was an Officer ever a PoW ?
It is much easier to establish fairly accurately whether an Officer
had ever been a PoW than it is for an OR, even if the man's "service"
or medal records do not mention the fact, because after the war the Military
Agents Messrs Cox & Co released their own records of Officers
known (by them) to have been detained by any of the axis powers.
These details are believed to be fairly
accurate and comprehensive, and although they do not give you a tremendous
amount of information they can at least confirm the fact of the Officer's
internment. These records normally confirm the Officer's surname / christian
name initials / date reported missing or captured / date repatriated / sometimes
where he was held captive or where he died if he died in captivity.
Also, the "service records" of repatriated officers (see the main "British Army
During The Great War" index) often include the officer's
own statement about the circumstances of their capture, - those statements
being a requirement of the War Office when the officer's case for "exoneration" of
responsibility for his capture was being considered.
General or specific Camp information
If you are looking for information which may come under the "subject"
heading, for example with regard to conditions in a particular Prison
Camp, sanitary arrangements, maltreatment of prisoners, medical attention,
prisoners being put to work, or a myriad of other classifications, then
the PoW repatriation interrogations may be of considerable use. They are
quite well indexed and cross-referenced and the identity of the Officer
or OR making the statement is often quite clearly given, - though
the subject indexing is convoluted and the situation is further complicated
because the reports are separated into those made by OR's and those made
by Officers, with Royal Army Medical Corps Officer's reports being further
segregated from the latter.
These
reports often refer to other Soldiers or Officers, but there they fall
down a bit as the third party is more often than not refered to as "Private
W.Smith of the Middlesex Regiment", or "Captain Anderson of the ASC",
or other such nondescript titles. Nevertheless, a very useful source.
Irish PoW's in Germany
Just in passing really, - there's an interesting little slant
here. Early during the war a large proportion of Irish PoW's were segregated
into a camp at Limburg where they were given (slightly) better treatment;
here they were visited by Sir Roger Casement, who was trying to raise
an "Irish Brigade". Despite inducements and threats less than sixty out
of over two-thousand men in the camp could be persuaded to join this "rebel"
unit. It is not unusual to find reference to Casement's activities amongst
the repatriated PoW interrogation reports. some
quite specific lists, all from 1916There are three very
specific sets of lists which can be of help, though they all have drawbacks
and are cumbersome to deal with, - none of them are indexed in any way.
It must be stressed that I cannot vouch for the completeness of these
lists in the context of their titles / contents. All are contemporaneous
documents:-
British PoW's interned in Germany by the period March - April
1916.
These lists were apparently compiled from information passed
from the German Government to American Embassy staff. They seem to cover
all branches of British Forces and comprise individual lists under the
names of the camp or hospital in which the Officers or Men are currently
being held. The sub-lists are not in alphabetical order, and whilst
they are not uniformly constructed they do in the main give the men's
names / their Regiment and Battalion / place of capture / and
sometimes regimental number and home town.
British PoW's held in Turkey by about February 1916.
(ie very soon after the evacuation of the Gallipoli
Peninsula). These lists apparently include all "British" PoW's notified
to the American Ambassador in Constantinople by the period in question,
- they seem to include all branches of the British Forces, including,
for example, submariners, Australians, and New Zealanders. They are in
no particular order (certainly not alphabetical). In most instances the
lists give full christian and surnames / Regiment / Battalion / Army number
(for OR's) / place of internment.
British PoW's in Switzerland, for repatriation, till about
June 1916.
These lists mainly seem to detail Officers and
OR's passing through Switzerland during the first half of 1916, destined
for repatriation on medical grounds. They are not in alphabetical
order and generally give full christian and surnames / rank
/ Regiment / sometimes the Battalion / medical condition or disability
/ the name of the detention camp or hospital from which they have been
repatriated. Other
"obscure" lists
There are occasional lists or mentions of Pow's in war
diaries, newspapers, regimental journals, and other sources - these
are too numerous to detail here, they just have to be noted as one comes
across them, in the hope that they may come in useful one-day. One of the
"strangest" lists which I have come across in this category is in
the diary of a Division who are on the Somme during the 1916 battles -
they captured a hapless German Infantryman who was out in no-man's-land
during the night, his officer having sent him over to pin a list of British
prisoners on the barbed wire infront of the British trenches !
The list is three pages long and neatly typed,
the page headings in German but the rest in English. This list gives,
in the main, the men's names, numbers, ranks, Battalion, and Company,
and highlights those who were wounded when taken prisoner (very efficient,
"very German" !). The Battalions mentioned are the 5th and 7th Sherwood
Foresters (Notts & Derby Regt), Queen Victoria's Rifles and the London
Rifle Brigade (9th & 5th Battalions the London Regiment, respectively),
the 5th Cheshires, and the 6th North Staffordshires. Officers are listed
for the Sherwood Foresters, North Staffs, London Regt., and Royal Field
Artillery. All the men are noted as captured on July 1st 1916, the first
day of the Battle of The Somme. The War Office weekly
casualty lists
As far as can be ascertained only one partially complete compilation
copy of the War Office weekly casualty lists survives; it is archived
in London and covers the period mid-1917 through into 1919. This is an
immensely important document, but it must be stressed from the outset
that it is difficult to access and can be extremely time-consuming
to search.
The War Office "lists", though published weekly, were in fact compiled
on a daily basis and consist of whole series of sub-lists under
headings such as "wounded", "wounded and missing", "missing", "missing
believed killed", "died of wounds", "killed", - these sub-headings
meandering into such complicated areas as "previously reported wounded
and missing, now reported wounded and not missing" etc., etc., etc.
It's a terribly convoluted format which is made even more difficult (time-consuming)
because the lists are then further sub-divided into Officers and OR's,
and then sub-divided again into regimental or corps lists in order of
precedence. A very small print format and often indistinct sub-list headers
doesnt make it any easier to search.
Though probably most useful for identifying OR non-fatal casualties,
these lists can be of help with PoW's because they identify men known
to have been taken prisoner and, for a period following the Armistice,
they note the arrival of repatriated prisoners in the UK. The lists do
have an advantage over some other sources as they are quite consistent
in recording OR'S Army numbers.
Probably a source of "last resort", simply because of the complexity
of the search process, but nevertheless a very useful and important document.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The burial place of a British or Dominion Soldier who died in captivity
(in German hands) should not be miss-read as indicative of the specific
area where he actually died, as in 1923 it was decided that all British
PoW burials on German soil should be concentrated into four main cemeteries
in order that proper care and maintenance of the graves could be achieved.
In some cases this entailed re-burials quite some distance from the original
burial sites, - for example the concentration cemetery at Stahnsdorf (Berlin
South-Western Cemetery) took burials from no less than 146 existing
sites.
However, the CWGC records are quite good at recording the major
grave sites from which the concentrations to the four final cemeteries
were made, and some deductions may be possible from those records, - especially
where deaths amongst groups of men from the same regiment can be established.
Regimental records
Regimental records are treated as a separate subject under the main
"British Army 1914-19" index, but a specific example relating to a prisoner
of war will be relevant here, - it's just indicative of the kind of thing
you may be able to find, if you look hard enough.
Private 7207 William ("Willie") Struth was a recalled Reservist
in the 1st Battalion Queens Own Cameron Highlanders immediately after
the war broke out. The regimental journal (the "79th News") first mentions
him in the issue of April 1915 where he appears amongst a list of men
under the heading "The following non-commissioned officers and men
were reported missing on the 11th November 1914". Subsequent updating
lists in the journal never expanded on this news of Willie, but as I knew
for a fact that he had not died during the war, and had a particular
interest in his fate, a visit was made to the regimental archives
in Inverness and some more obscure records were examined. |