Prisoners of War 1914

You'll find a number of research resources linked from this particular Army Ancestry Research blog, but if you have an interest in First World War prisoners of war you'll need to visit my Army Service Numbers 1881-1918 blog.

Some while ago I transcribed various lists of men held by the Imperial War Museum. These form part of a collection of lists of men who were all captured before Christmas Day 1914 and therefore missed out on Princess Mary's gift tin. Thankfully, these lists of men survive in digital format. The digital quality is not the best in the world but you'll be doing better than me if you can manage to persuade the folk at the IWM to give you access to the original documents.

I'm nearing the end of this particular publication schedule and will have posted all transcriptions by Christmas 2018.

Allied PoWs in German Hands 1914-1918

This book turned up on my desk just before Christmas and I must say I've enjoyed flicking through it. I have a particular interest in the British PoWs of 1914 and have compiled a number of PoW databases, and so this book will be a useful addition to my library and will sit happily alongside another Pen & Sword title: Tracing your Prisoner of War Ancestors (below).

This is primarily a photographic essay which deals with both military prisoners and also civilian internees, principally those detained at Ruhleben. In as far as it goes, the book is fine, but to my mind it could have gone a little further. The bibliography is helpful, but would have been more helpful still had it pointed the reader to online resources for PoWs such as those on Findmypast and the reports in WO 161 which are held at The National Archives (and also published on Findmypast). It would have been helpful too to see more detail, particularly dates, against the photographs, although I appreciate that in many cases, that detail may not exist in the originals.

Personally, I would have liked to understand more about the men's uniforms - plenty of which are illustrated - the variation to those uniforms, the mix of nationalities in camps; more about the internment of men in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and the repatriation progress both during and after the war. As I say, as far as the book goes it is good enough and certainly worth the £14.99 investment (or £12 if you hop along quickly now to the Pen & Sword website), and as the title makes clear, this is more than just a book about British PoWs. Our allies, and in the case of the French, men from their colonies, are also well represented here.

Prisoner of War interview reports in WO 161

 

The Committee on the Treatment of British Prisoners of War conducted over 3,000 interviews with British and Empire PoWs before the Armistice was signed in November 1918 and these make absolutely fascinating reading. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been going through the list of men and updating my own database of Princess Mary tin PoWs, extracts from which I've been publishing on my Army Service Numbers 1881-1918 blog.

Whilst a service record will give you the bare bones of a man's military history, these reports tell you far more about the man and of course, far more about the conditions under which he was held. What you have here, in fact, is really the makings of a very compelling book on British PoWs during the First World War.  

The National Archives has had these reports published on its site for quite a while, but you can now also view these on Findmypast as part of its general Prisoners of War 1715-1945 collection. 

The WO 161 series is comprised of six very distinct interview groupings which I detail below. I also thought it would be helpful to publish the questions that the interviewers asked the men they met. There were two enquiry sheets used: one which concerned treatment in hospital and one which concerned treatment in camps. Here they are. Images are Crown Copyright, The National Archives:

WO 161/95 (112 results) and WO 161/96 (202 results) are interviews with officers. WO 161/97 (89 results) is interviews with medical officers, and WO 161/98 (707 results), WO 161/99 (264 results) and WO 161/100 (1,964 results) are interviews with other ranks. Clicking on each of these links will take you to the results on Findmypast BUT, as usual, you will need a subscription or pay per view credits to actually read the reports. To view the whole collection of WO 161 prisoner of war interview reports just click on the link. Once you're into the database you can then start playing around with the filters. I was interested in WO 161 prisoner of war interviews with men captured in 1914 and so I filtered on year of capture and just restricted the search results to 1914 Prisoners of War.  As with most things in this life, it's easy once you know how.

The one big regret I have is that there are a number of interviews which were conducted but never published and I live in hope that one day the original interview transcripts will be found because then I'll be able to see what my old mate Charles Sabourin (below) had to say. Charles was wounded at Mons on the 23rd August 1914 and was a repatriated prisoner of war in early 1915. He was certainly still bitter when, probably less than a year after he'd been wounded, he wrote in Nurse Oliver's autograph book.

Also worth noting is that some of the reports mention other prisoners of war by name and these men have not been indexed. Another of my future tasks is to go through the 1914 men's accounts and spot other named PoWs so that I can update my database accordingly.

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L/8485 Pte Ernest Locke, 4th Royal Fusiliers

 

 

I am always delighted to hear from descendants of the men I commemorate or refer to on my military blogs and the man above is a new face to me, thanks to an email from his granddaughter yesterday. L/8485 Private Ernest Locke appears on my Royal Fusiliers PoW list on the Army Service Numbers blog, and Maureen Locke has sent me this undated photograph of him as a prisoner.

 

 

Ernest Locke arrived overseas with the 4th Royal Fusiliers on the 13th August 1914, an original member of the BEF and an early arrival in France. No service record appears to survive for him but his regimental number indicates that he must have joined the regiment around December 1900. His terms of enlistment would have almost certainly been seven years with the colours and five on the reserve which suggests that he probably chose to extend his period of reserve service as a Section D Reservist. This would have given him a further four years' reserve service tacked onto his 12 years (effective from December 1912) and whilst on the reserve he would have been paid 4d a day.

 

 

Ernest's medal index card is above, the reverse showing an address in Poplar, East London. On my PoW database I have an address for 179 Maypole Road, Battersea.

 

Ernest Locke was captured on the 26th October 1914 at Thulin, Belgium, this information appearing on a single page in the ICRC collection online. The prison camp is noted as Altdamm and his sojourn there quite possibly saved his life. I do not know when he was repatriated to the UK, but presumably in late 198 or early 1919.

 

 

My thanks to Maureen Locke for this great photo of her grandfather.

 

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Other Ranks Prisoners of War 1914

I have started publishing rolls of NCOs and men who were captured and became prisoners of war on or before 25th December 1914. A partial archive listing these men survives at the Imperial War Museum and I am publishing transcriptions of these names. I am publishing regimental number, rank and name, although in many cases I have much additional information such as date of capture, home address, next of kin and next of kin address.

Read more about the 1914 PoW resource on my 1914 PoWs page on the Army Service Numbers blog. Also click on the links below to see the regimental rolls published so far:

Durham Light Infantry
Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment)
Royal Fusiliers
Suffolk Regiment

The image above, purchased this morning, shows allied PoWs at Diepholz camp in Hanover.

Prisoners of the First World War - International Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross has published a free online archive of prisoners of war of the First World War. The release is long-awaited and contains the details of thousands of men  captured between 1914 and 1918. Click on the image above to go straight to the ICRC website and start searching.