Quote:
Originally Posted by stormlion1
If you were enlisted and captured your conditions and hope for reparation back to your own side were bothe horrible and nil, and in that order. Meanwhile if you were an officer your chances for the same were much better. Upto and including receiving your pay from your captors, housing, and even freedom of movement as long as you gave your word not to attempt to escape.
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This was especially true in the American Revolution, where the Americans had officially been declared traitors by the King; the British therefore sometimes didn't consider themselves bound by the standards of treatment of POWs even for that time, because legally they were criminals, not soldiers. My many-times-great-grandfather was captured at the Battle of Fort Washington and imprisoned at the French Church (the Huguenot Church). He was one of around 800 survivors out of 2,837 soldiers captured at that battle. The official history of the war claims he disappeared while captured, but he re-enlisted and later had a pension from Congress, so we know he didn't die there. As his parole disallowed him from serving on the front lines, he ironically became a POW camp guard for the Revolutionary Army.