FAR FROM HOME

MILITARIA

For some 360,000 captured British and Commonwealth soldiers, World War Two would prove long, dull, and arduous. Fortunately, there were mechanisms in place to support those locked up behind the wire and their loved ones at home

“Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat,” Winston Churchill once ruminated.

For Br itain, the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942 was the famous turning point of the war. It is equally the case that, before this crux, British and Commonwealth forces suffered several big losses in Norway, France, Belgium, Greece and the Mediterranean, and the Far East. For both the captives and their relatives, it would be the start of several years of uncertainty, separation and worry. During World War Two, more than 170,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen became POWs in German-held territory. However, as Germany and Italy were signatories to the 1929 Geneva Convention, British prisoners were treated relatively well, especially compared to their Russian counterparts.

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