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Prisoner Of War English Patch

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Now the prisoners are being held on the northeast side of the valley in a large cage, but the key to the cage is in a cave on the south side of the valley. You'll have to steal the key, create a distraction, and free the citizens. I'll be in touch through the field kit. An armed soldier arrived at their room in the hospital and, in broken English, told them to. Its English translation was “Transit Camp of the Luftwaffe. Large white rocks spelled out “Prisoner of War Camp” across the length of the camp's front.

This is a guide to searching for records primarily of First World War British and Commonwealth prisoners of war (PoWs). There is also some advice on searching for the surviving records of British PoWs captured in previous wars. The guide does not cover PoWs in British hands.

There are no official or published lists of all PoWs so establishing whether a serviceman was a PoW is not always possible.

The limits of First World War records

An estimated 192,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen were taken captive during the First World War. There is no comprehensive list covering all of these PoWs, and the surviving documents cover only a fraction of those who were captured.

There is a published List of British Officers taken prisoner in the various theatres of war between August 1914 and November 1918. The list covers officers of the British Army, Royal Air Force, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Naval Division. As well as names and rank, the book provides the date the officer went missing, where and when he was imprisoned and the date of his repatriation or death if the officer died while prisoner.

There is very little information anywhere on PoWs who were liberated after the Armistice on 11 November 1918.

Online records

Prisoners of war: selected records, 1715-1945

Search and download a wide variety of selected PoW records 1715–1945 on Findmypast.co.uk (£). They include records from the:

Napoleonic Wars, 1799–1815 (including lists and accounts of naval and civilian prisoners)
Crimean War, 1853–1856
Second Anglo-Boer War, also known as the South African War, 1899–1902
First World War, 1914–1918

The records are drawn mostly from the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, War Office, Admiralty and Air Ministry. For more details see findmypast.co.uk.

British prisoners of war: interviews and reports, 1914-1920

Search and download (£) interviews and reports concerning 3,000 British PoWs (WO 161) on our website.

These documents primarily concern servicemen who escaped internment, were repatriated before the end of the war, or were incarcerated in a neutral country. Approximately 750 pages of interviews and reports on First World War PoWs of ranks below those of commissioned officers are known not to have survived.

Selected records of prisoner of war deaths, 1914-1918

Search selected PoW death records (RG 35/45-RG 35/69) on bmd.co.uk (£).

They include deaths in:

military and non-military hospitals
enemy and occupied territory were notified to British authorities by foreign embassies
legations
registration authorities
American authorities in charge of British internees

The majority of this information is in French.

Prisoners of war cards and lists, 1914-1918

Search by name the First World War prisoner of war cards on the International Committee of the Red Cross archive. These cards were created from lists sent to the ICRC by countries at war. The online material can also include enquiry cards from next of kin, repatriation lists and accounts of PoW camps. Please see their website for more information about this collection.

First World War service records and medal index cards

Upon repatriation, officers were required to detail the circumstances of their capture. If you know an officer was a PoW, their service record may have their capture report with it. In general, service records, especially those of other ranks, contain only minimal details of imprisonment, sometimes limited to dates of capture and/or release – you are unlikely to find any more than this on a medal index card.

For more details see the guides to:

British Army soldiers and British Army officers

Details of prisoners of war in the London Gazette

Consult the London Gazette on The Gazette website for sporadic mentions and details of British PoWs, especially officers. Includes PoWs from the:

Crimean War
South African War
First World War

Records available only at The National Archives in Kew

To access these records you will either need to visit us to see the documents for free at our building in Kew or, where you can identify a specific document reference, order a copy (£) to be sent to you.

Foreign Office reports, 1915-1919

Use the box below to search Discovery, our catalogue, for correspondence and reports on people who became PoWs during the First World War in FO 383.

Narrow your search by using double quotation marks to find a person’s full name, such as “John Williams”.

Please note, some of these are available on Findmypast (£).

Records of air force prisoners, 1914-1918

Browse AIR 1 for prisoners of war of Royal Air Force, Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service. Laser cutter comparison.

Records of naval prisoners of war, 1914-1920

Consult ADM 12 for PoWs of Royal Navy, Royal Naval Air Service, Royal Navy Reserve and Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve personnel. Read Naval correspondence using the ADM 12 indexes and digests for more information.

Records of merchant navy prisoners of war, 1914-1918

Browse MT 9 (code 106) for prisoner of war files of merchant navy personnel. Some files are indexed by individual name and/or ship.

Records in other archives and organisations

Lists of prisoners of war held by regimental museums

It is possible that the soldier’s regiment kept or has since compiled its own list of PoWs. Search Find an archive for the location and details of regimental museums.

Other resources

Guide to prisoners of the American Revolutionary War

Read the Guide to the Materials for American History to 1783 by C M Andrews (New York, 1965) for details of British troops captured during the American Revolutionary War and during earlier military and naval actions in North America.

British Army in First World War website

Browse the Long, Long Trail website for information on tracing a person during the First World War.

Every medieval English monarch had to decide how to deal with prisoners of war. Ruling over territory that sometimes ran from the highlands of Scotland to the south of France, their authority rested on violence. Fighting the French, Scots, Welsh, Irish, or their own nobility in a string of civil wars, they could not have kept their throne without victories on the battlefield.

How, then did they deal with the warriors they defeated?

Ransoms

From early in the Middle Ages, paying a ransom was an important principle of warfare. After a battle, prisoners expected to be able to buy their freedom. It could be a costly business – a king who lost good men and spent his wealth fighting would want compensation. The son of the Constable of Richmond Castle had to pay 200 marks after his father’s castle was seized in 1216.

Prisoners usually remained in captivity until their relatives could gather the ransom. Occasionally they were freed temporarily to raise the payment themselves, as happened with some of the prisoners after the Siege of Carrickfergus in 1210. Once the money was forthcoming, conditions might be attached to a person’s release, such as not making war again.

This system worked well for everybody involved. Those who took captives were given a chance to profit from being merciful. Knights could fight in the knowledge that if they lost, they would not be killed out of hand. They could expect to be treated reasonably well while they were in captivity. When a prisoner was mistreated, as in the disappearance of King John’s nephew Arthur of Brittany, it became a source of scandal.

Chivalry

In the 14^th century, existing and ill-defined rules of war evolved into something more sophisticated – the concept of chivalry. Writers such as Geoffroi de Charny took ideas about correct knightly behavior and tried to define them clearly. It created a system that was part rules of war and part guide for gentlemanly conduct.

Much of the writing originated in France, although it had a significant influence in England. Only one in ten of the mounted and armored soldiers fighting in the Hundred Years War held the rank of Knight, the rest being men-at-arms. The rules were extended to include those combatants as well.

Chivalry formalized the ransom system, emphasizing the honor involved. It also encouraged institutions such as the English Court of Chivalry, which helped settle disputes over payments. Prisoners such as the French King John, captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, could expect to be treated with clemency due to their financial value and the importance of a chivalrous reputation.

The Limits of Chivalry

Both chivalry and the earlier ransom system had their limits.

Certain types of troops were considered exempt from any rules of war. For example, King John butchered the archers captured during the Siege of Rochester in 1215. It was regarded as acceptable because of their social class and also because Pope Pious III had condemned the use of bows in war.

Towns and castles which resisted during a siege and were then captured were exempt from mercy. It was formalized in the chivalric rules of the 14^th century, allowing besiegers to use the threat of slaughter to end things quickly.

There were times when the lenient treatment of prisoners was deliberately withheld, and leaders who usually paid attention to chivalry would forgo it when they felt it necessary. At the Battle of Crécy in 1346, King Edward III ordered that no quarter be given, to ensure his men would not be distracted hunting ransoms. At Agincourt in 1415, Henry V ordered prisoners to be slaughtered during the battle.

Fighting on the Fringes

The Celtic fringe of Britain proved a particularly merciless region. The English regarded the Welsh and some of the Scots as barbarians. These were people who neither knew nor followed the rules of “civilized” warfare. It was, therefore, acceptable to treat them harshly leading to acts of slaughter on both sides.

When the Welsh captured an English castle in 1212, all the prisoners were beheaded. The English were already treating the Welsh the same way, executing rather than ransoming prisoners. The execution of Walter Selby and his sons by the Scots was condemned by the English. Many believed the killings led to the Scots’ defeat at Neville’s Cross in 1346, as an act of judgment by God upon the murderers.

Dealing with Rebels

The treatment of rebels and captives from civil wars changed over the course of the Middle Ages.

During the revolt against King John, his advisors persuaded him not to kill noble prisoners, something he had proven willing to do in the past. During the Barons’ Revolt of the 1260s, there was a similar level of restraint. The leader of the rebels, Simon de Montfort, died in battle, but his followers were spared. Even their fines and confiscated property were less than in later rebellions.

By the time of Thomas of Lancaster’s revolt against Edward II in 1321-2, attitudes had changed. Rebellion against the Crown was not treated as a form of political expression. It was an act of treachery to be punished. Lancaster and the other leaders of the revolt were executed. Instead of facing ransoms and fines, rebels became outlaws or corpses, their bodies left on display as a lesson.

This may have been due to the wars with Scotland and Wales, which blurred the line between rebellion and the conquest of “barbarians.” The execution of William Wallace in 1305 was a particularly brutal act against a prisoner of war who was both an outsider and an insider, a Scot and a knightly rebel.

On the other hand, it may have been monarchs became more brutal to assert their control and repress dissent.

In Medieval England, wealthy and powerful prisoners of war could usually expect to be treated well. They were released in return for money, as long as they were not regarded as rebels or barbarians. For the rest of the poor soldiers, it was a matter of luck. They might be freed, or they might face execution as a lesson to others. Which way the dice fell was not in their control.

Sources:

Richard Barber (1995), The Knight and Chivalry.

Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry.

John Gillingham (1992), ‘Conquering the barbarians: war and chivalry in twelfth-century Britain,’ Haskins Society Journal 4.

Maurice Keen (1984), Chivalry.

Matthew Strickland (1996), War and Chivalry.

Ralph V Turner (1994), King John.