If You Were A Pow And Your Captors Planned To...

[sandyRoe]

...include you in a prisoner swap could you decline to go?

[jourdain2]

Good one....  if you were a prisoner; would you be permitted to object? You might try, of course, but I suspect you would be swiftly overruled to say the least.

[THECORBYLOON]

Considering both sides want something in return, I doubt the wish of a prisoner would be high on the list of priorities.

[Deskdiary]

Raving Mod may feel different to TCL though.

[Peter Pedant]

Most cdnt wait to swap ( My father reached  Rouen and then "it was all off" as a result of reports of maltreatment of german prisoners in Persia)

I think if you wanted to stay when the officer "you are all set" - I think you said as early as poss - No thank you sir

Douglas Bader wd not allow his batman to be repatriated - "a skivvie you are and a skivvie you will stay !"

 

[Peter Pedant]

My father didnt like him much and was glad when he was carted off to Colditz

[Peter Pedant]

Raving Mod may feel different to TCL though

so you say the mods have feelings?

[THECORBYLOON]

DD, odd as it may seem, we see eye-to-eye on everything...

[Peter Pedant]

O god you are not gonna go out drinking together are you?

[naomi24]

Why would you?  I can't think of a reason any prisoner would decline to go.

[THECORBYLOON]

It could be that a Government could see the capture as a security risk and want to punish the person more severely or kill him or her upon being returnt.

[sandyRoe]

Naomi24 

A pow could fear being returned to the front line.  

If you knew your own leaders were  tyrants you might fear they'd see the time you'd spent with the enemy as suspicious.

[Peter Pedant]

 I can't think of a reason any prisoner would decline to go.

think harder: return of the cossacks to Russia 1945

The betrayal of Yalta - last time I mentioned this I really was flooded wiv " what Yalta den" " Does he mean Malta and cant spell?"

They all went to Gulags ( the lucky ones) or a firing squad. and yes my father was caught up in this as a POW in the east. No one wanted to be liberated by the Russians

and now.... early in the Ukraine war - the Yukes wd ring up a Russians mother and say - take a bus and come and collect him.

o god this is AB poison - someone whose father had personal experience

[davebro3]

weren't captured Russian soldiers in WW2 sent to the gulags as traitors on returning home...

[Peter Pedant]

Hi sands you got  their before me

Does this count? after the disastrous Syracusan expedition ( 400BC) any Greek POW who ( they were enslaved, no Geneva convention then!) cd quote a line of Aeschylus was allowed to go home( I think)

The returnees wd queue up outside his house to thank him.

( impossibly tortured analogy just put in to bait the mods)

[Peter Pedant]

there  - - there - chrissakes

[sandyRoe]

Did he write The Frogs, if so:

Ribit, ribit, ribit.

[Peter Pedant]

hi Sanz - happy sunday

no that was Aristophanes, and the frogs said

breeeeax!

The Poet Euripides 

was an old sobersides

His play Andromache

doesnt make your  ribs ache

[davebro3]

PP - did you forget your meds again...

[Peter Pedant]

weren't captured Russian soldiers in WW2 sent to the gulags as traitors on returning home...

yes they were - there were a lot of DPs ( displaced persons) in Darzett ( aaaargh) in the late forties , fifties so the people of Beaminster and Bridport are just about the only ones with the group memory of this disgraceful episode.

oh yeah god one -  I have written of him before, said he had joined the Red Army, been captured, joined the German Army..... christ how come you are still  alive ?

He walked from ( luneberg heath) to Trst ( Trieste) ! and then across Italy and France and managed to get to Blighty ( and Darzett - aaarh)

[10ClarionSt]

PP, part of that skivvies' duties was to carry Bader up some stairs every day so he could use the shower. When asked about it after the war, the guy was surprisingly philosophical about it and just said it was wartime. These things happened.