CONUS Factions

[Homer]

Taking a stab from WW2 US practice.

High Value prisoners (crypto/commo, special weapons, leadership, technicians, sub/bomber crew) would be a commodity and probably get a special high value camp for extended exploitation. This was the case with the camps at Fort Hunt or Pine Grove Furnace. Perhaps the initiation of tactical nuclear warfare causes the European allies to evacuate this class of prisoner to the US and Canada, swelling what’s already there.

Regular POWs would likely be backhauled through the supply system to the theater logistics heads- Antwerp and Bremerhaven on the central front or bandar abbas in Iran for example. At that point they could go back to the US and Canada to free up host nation forces and resources. This would require a legal opine as POWs are legally the responsibility of the country capturing them and not to be change custodians. Perhaps a broader definition of NATO as an entity under common command similar to the broader definition of British Empire that allowed UK captures to be sent to Canada in WW2. Otherwise, each nato member establishes their own camps- that would really strain some states.

POWs captured in austere theaters, for example in CENTCOM, Southern Europe, Norway, or at sea may be sent directly to conus or camps by logistic backhaul. This happened historically with Afrika Korps and some Italian POWs as there was less strain in holding them in North Africa.

Just my thoughts

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by Homer

Taking a stab from WW2 US practice.

High Value prisoners (crypto/commo, special weapons, leadership, technicians, sub/bomber crew) would be a commodity and probably get a special high value camo for extended exploitation. This was the case with the camps at Fort Hunt or Pine Grove Furnace. Perhaps the initiation of tactical nuclear warfare causes the European allies to evacuate this class of prisoner to the US and Canada, swelling what’s already there.

Regular POWs would likely be backhauled through the supply system to the theater logistics heads- Antwerp and Bremerhaven on the central front or bandar abbas in Iran for example. At that point they could go back to the US and Canada to free up host nation forces and resources. This would require a legal opine as POWs are legally the responsibility of the country capturing them and not to be change custodians. Perhaps a broader definition of NATO as an entity under common command similar to the broader definition of British Empire that allowed UK captures to be sent to Canada in WW2. Otherwise, each nato member establishes their own camps- that would really strain some states.

POWs captured in austere theaters, for example in CENTCOM, Southern Europe, Norway, or at sea may be sent directly to conus or camps by logistic backhaul. This happened historically with Afrika Korps and some Italian POWs as there was less strain in holding them in North Africa.

Just my thoughts

That all makes sense while central authority is maintained but as the war progresses and feeding prisoners becomes a burden (as there are elements of the population starving) I think that that will break down and, depending on the T2k timeline you're playing, that could well have been in 1998.

I think that a camp of starving prisoners on either side would become a security issue for the military forces guarding them and that may well lead to atrocities. I think that prisoners will be used as slave labour and it's a trope having Russian/Soviet guards executing POWs.

I therefore think that marauder bands of former POWs, or even community militia made up of former POWs, make sense in any T2k setting. About 10 years ago I ran a T2k campaign where the PCs were former POWs who had been recruited into a Foreign Legion style unit fighting on the Ukrainian speaking side in a Ukrainian civil war. It worked quite well as a game, though it would probably be in poor taste now.

[Homer]

I tend to think that transportation of prisoners to CONUS/Canada breaks down just as completely as the remainder of the logistics system following TDM. By spring of 1998 it’s doubtful POWs are being shipped back except for very rare cases of high and relatively immediate intelligence value (ex. “We just captured the guy who knows the post-strike replenishment locations of every Soviet sub-tender.” “Put him on a KC-135 and fly him back.”).

I’m thinking POWs stateside may well get offered a deal in many cases- work in exchange for food and protection from vengeful civilians- at least until things break down completely. During WW2, German and Italian POWs often performed agricultural and other non-military labor. It stands to reason a similar arrangement may be made in T2K. If the POWs are seen as an overall asset to the local agricultural community then it could very well be acceptable for them to remain and even to integrate with the community to a degree as time passes (like trusties)- this situation occurred during WW2 when German POWs working in forestry in SE Arkansas were sometimes “signed” to local loggers for extended periods of labor away from their camps.

In other areas, either those hard hit by Soviet strikes or more resource poor, POWs may be at more risk from the local civilians than from their guards. Such cases may see POWs rise up out of fear of liquidation and either stage a mass breakout or even seize a camp. I think the UK sourcebook has a group of Soviet ex-POWs who become marauders after freeing themselves. It’s not too far fetched for a group of ex-POWs to establish a “fiefdom” over an area they have seized.

[castlebravo92]

Once the nukes fly and civilization breaks down, literally no one is going to be worried about the plight of POWs other than the POWs themselves.

Let's say you are in charge of a POW camp at Camp Mabry near Austin, Texas. You have a company (150-200) of third tier soldiers guarding some 20,000 Warsaw Pact (mostly Russia) POWs. You need 20 tons of food and water to feed them each day.

San Antonio to the south and Houston to the East get nuked. You lock down the camp. While your men might be really useful to help control social unrest in nearby Austin or help with disaster relief in San Antonio, you have 20,000 POWs to tend to.

The attacks and the panic completely disrupt the distribution of food to your camp. While there's a fair amount of land, and there is a bit of gardening and even some light farming, it's woefully insufficient to feed the entire population, and besides, it's December, there's no harvestable crops right now anyway. You have maybe 7 days worth of food on-hand, and 2 weeks worth of fuel. Comms are disrupted by the EMP, so you are initially out of contact with any higher HQ other than what else is at Camp Mabry (being a re-activated infantry basic training base). So you lock down the POW camp to barracks except for essential POWs (like most prisons, the POWs actually run most of the camp, not the guards). All leave for soldiers is canceled and all soldiers are restricted to camp. Prisoners go on half rations.

After a week or two, things settle somewhat. Some food deliveries restart. Contact is re-established with higher HQs. Prisoners are brought back up to 3/4 rations.

But then the desertions start. Worried about their families, some soldiers abandon their posts and disappear into the night, taking their guns, gear, and food. Soon you go from 200 soldiers, to 150, to 100. Catching and shooting some deserters "to make an example" barely stops the flow. You try to get the army to feed you some of the basic training graduates, but things are getting bad everywhere. Classes "graduate" early, and are sent to various urban centers undertrained and underequipped to defend vital infrastructure from rioting mobs or to deal with the mobs using "extreme" measures. And the mobs are rioting because they are starving. Literally. Where soldiers had local families, they move onto the Camp so that they can be better protected from the effects of a collapsing civilization.

Meanwhile, here you are feeding 16,000 of the enemy (it's been a hard winter).

And then one day, say around May, the last basic training class graduates and is marched off to join some hastily raised light infantry division. Some general in Maryland, Virginia, or Colorado marks the camp off their map.
Time to triage and concentrate resources on the important parts of the country, not Texas. Austin and San Antonio have descended into total Hobbesian chaos. Refugees - thousands of them start migrating towards the camp because of open fields, and the perceived safety your meager garrison provides. And then the supply trucks - already becoming less and less frequent - stop coming altogether. And now you have 15,000 of starving enemy inside the wire, and who knows how many thousands of starving Americans outside the wire. And it's just you and 80 soldiers and their families. With not enough food, not enough fuel, and not enough ammo.

The value of hostile slave labor where there are too many people and not enough food is zero. After WW2, German women were selling their bodies for a potato.

So yeah, I think atrocity would be the norm, not the exception with POWs. Most of them would either be worked to death gular or concentration camp style, or killed outright, either by guards, or a hostile population. There may be some infrequent scenario where the POWs overpower the guards or the guards simply walk away and abandon the POWs one day (like what happened to some of the concentration camps at the end of WW2).

[Raellus]

Y'all raise a bunch of great points re POWs.

Consider an alternative- the POWs integrate into the local society. It's not as far-fetched as it may seem.

Stephen Ambrose recounted the following story in Citizen Soldiers:

During WWII, an African-American G.I. passing through Texas observed, "about two dozen German prisoners of war, with two American guards, came to the station. They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time."

This sort of thing wasn't all that uncommon. Some ex-POWs from Germany and Italy enjoyed their time in US POW camps so much that, after the war, they returned to the USA to pursue citizenship.

In Germany, some Allied POWs were literally farmed out to local German families to act as manual labor on their actual farms. Over time, some Germans came to see these POWs as almost part of the family (although other families treated these live-in parolees as slave labor).

If surrounding communities are deprived of their own young men by the draft and such, they might be desperate for a source of same to help provide labor and, perhaps, marriageable partners.

I turned this concept into an encounter in a CONUS-based campaign I ran a few years back. The PCs show up at a little town in SE Arkansas and noticed that most of the men of military age were speaking English with heavy [Slavic] accents...

The PCs struggled with the scenario a bit. Initially, they though the men must be escapees holding the townsfolk hostage. Once they learned of the voluntary, cooperative nature of the arrangement, they had to decide whether to leave the situation alone or intervene in some way.

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[kato13]

Webstral had a commander in the American Southwest go even further with EPWs including integrating them into his command structure.

His major threads are in the thread map. Sorry I don't remember which ones in particular.
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=773#t2k_web

I am adjusting the site search to allow 3 character terms so you can advance search for terms "POW" and "EPW" for him as a user. Other 3 character searches should be available as well. (EPA, DIA, TDM, etc)

[Homer]

I’ve heard similar things to the Ambrose story. Had an uncle who was invalided home from the ETO after the Bulge get assigned to the Camp Robinson POW camp. As an NCO his job was to circulate among the outlying camps and farms to spot check POW laborers. It was pretty relaxed and he has photos of POWs working unguarded in forestry, harvesting, and other outdoor occupations.

I tend to think being an EPW/POW post TDM will be a bad day. As others have stated, civilian mobs will want blood, and POWs will be an accessible target. I don’t see guard forces signing up for mass extermination in most cases, but neglect would be just as lethal.

My reference is the Union and Confederate camps during the Civil War. Reading about Libby Prison or Camp Douglas it seems like basic neglect rather than any systemic extermination was responsible for cutting a fairly substantial swathe through prisoner ranks.

[Mahatatain]

I think that there are some very good points in this thread.

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

And now you have 15,000 of starving enemy inside the wire, and who knows how many thousands of starving Americans outside the wire. And it's just you and 80 soldiers and their families. With not enough food, not enough fuel, and not enough ammo.

Building on this point, if you have some strong leaders amongst those 15k EPW then saying in your campaign set up that they overpowered and disarmed their guards is quite feasible. They could then easily split into several factions, for example, one that wants to build its sphere of influence in the local area, one that wants to head back to Europe and is therefore working its way eastwards in the vain attempt to find a port with a working ship, and one that has simply turned to banditry.

Certainly very interesting for some factions in a campaign.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Mahatatain

I think that there are some very good points in this thread.


Building on this point, if you have some strong leaders amongst those 15k EPW then saying in your campaign set up that they overpowered and disarmed their guards is quite feasible. They could then easily split into several factions, for example, one that wants to build its sphere of influence in the local area, one that wants to head back to Europe and is therefore working its way eastwards in the vain attempt to find a port with a working ship, and one that has simply turned to banditry.

Certainly very interesting for some factions in a campaign.

I think there would be some successful camp rebellions (which in turn, might lead to massacres of other camp POW populations).

POW camps in Texas and the Southwest might be "liberated" by invading Mexican forces in the June-September 1998 timeframe (then again, a lot of the POWs might have died by then).

I think, in other scenarios, the camp garrisons would just evaporate and desert and the POWs would be able to simply walk away.

But by June of 2000, I doubt there would be many / any intact and operating POW camps in CONUS. Food would be too scarce to bother taking prisoners and taking care of them afterwards (unless the "government" has specific labor needs that can't be filled by native born refugees / Elsies / drafted laborers).

But I do think Stranger in a Strangeland is a great party / scenario idea, and could explain why MilGov is sending the players to Johnson City, KS to deal with a group of Russian marauders that have taken over the town and are terrorizing the country side.

[Homer]

The Mexican invasion would be interesting for POWs/EPWs. Besides anyone who may be liberated outright, rumors of the invasion would doubtless get around the prison camps and embolden would be escapees or resisters. The goal of getting back to friendly lines may seem much more achievable without an ocean in between. Maybe these rumors are the catalyst for an armed uprising or mass breakout attempt.

One thing not addressed is the issue of nationality. Soviet POWs from some of the republics may find it harder to blend/disappear in the US, but there are significant Polish, Czech, Italian, and other groups spread throughout the US. It’s not too much of a stretch to see numbers of escaped POWs finding sanctuary ethnically similar populations in the US, especially as the war degenerates following TDM and a strong back and able body becomes more important for survival. There is/was a relatively large Italian population in Pine Bluff, AR for example, and Italian POWs held for labor in the Arkansas River delta could conceivably find refuge there.

By 2000, I’m wondering if POWs will be taken at all. Some groups may subscribe to an idea of shooting out of hand or keeping prisoners as slaves, but I’m betting this is only in the case of extreme hatred, criminal reputation, or a particularly bloodthirsty group. Others may be disarmed and dispersed or pointed in a direction and told to walk. In some circumstances defeated enemies may be offered the chance to “enlist” in the other army.