Palliative Pantomimes: Entertainments in Prisoner-of-War Camps

Abstract

To understand the predicaments that faced prisoners of war and the strategies they employed to resolve them, it is necessary to chart the journey which they had travelled before that journey came to an abrupt end. Writing in 1918, American doctor Daniel J. McCarthy observed that ‘one rarely comes across in the prison camps, a prisoner who had ever considered the possibility of being taken captive’.1 Members of the regular armies as well as the most enthusiastic volunteers were aware that they might become casualties of war but capture was itself a humiliating admission of failure even in the face of extenuating circumstances like running out of ammunition or being surrounded by superior enemy forces. Thus the effect of capture would be profound both psychologically and physically. Yet soldiers did surrender despite rumours of ‘take no prisoners’ and Winston Churchill’s caustic remark after World War II that ‘a prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him’.2 Though undoubtedly individuals surrendered, it was more common for members of a platoon or company to surrender en masse. It was safer to do so. The statistics speak for themselves: during World War 1 there were 500,000 French prisoners of war, 170,389 British, 21,263 Empire troops, 3.5 million Russians (51.8 per cent of total casualties), and 1.2 million German prisoners (9 per cent of total casualties).3