Prisoner Of War Quotes

“War is not just the shower of bullets and bombs from both sides, it is also the shower of blood and bones on both sides.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Taran. We go down fighting.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. They imprisoned all of them to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve for.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Julie would have died there.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“It's not unreal to me yet, though it might get that way soon. It still feels very real. And not even horrible -- the dead are just the dead. I am convinced that the living people they once were would have been proud of their protective bodies hoodwinking their murderers to save someone else. [..]

But it's not civilized. There is something indecent about it -- really foully indecent. The civilized Rose-person in me, who still seems to exist beneath the layers of filth, knows this. [..]

I have become so indifferent about the dead.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“You know, it set you at war with yourself.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“The prisoner, having reached the depth of his depression, gradually reawakens to the life around him. He licks himself and his wounded pride, opens his eyes, and finds that far away on the horizon there is still a ray of sunlight left.”
― P. H. Newman

“There was a big number over the door of the building. The number was five. Before the Americans could go inside, their only English-speaking guard told them to memorize their simple address, in case they got lost in the big city. Their address was this: 'Schlachthof-fünf.' Schlachthof means slaughterhouse. Fünf was good old five.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The prospect of going home again scared them. They couldn't imagine how they could ever settle to it. How they could just walk around the streets and pretend to be normal, look women in the eye again after what they had done and seen, ride on trams, sit at a table with a white cloth, and control their hands and just slowly eat. It was the little things that scared them. The big things you could hide in. It was little ones that gave a man away.”
― David Malouf

“I was mentally prepared to sustain serious injury or death, but before that day I never contemplated the reality of being captured by the enemy. I thought, "This is going to be hard on the folks," only to realize that I actually verbalized my thought out loud.

As the English-speaking officer and I walked side by side, he said, "War is terrible, isn't it?”
― Omanson, Oliver, Prisoner of War Number 21860: The World War II Memoirs of Oliver Omanson

“[...] during one train stop, I watched as another guard with a spirit of empathy, ran out into an apple orchard and picked apples. He carried his jacket like a bag and filled it with apples. The kind German came to our open train window and handed us each an apple. The juicy apple tasted so delicious. I so appreciated that apple and his unusual compassion.”
― Omanson, Oliver, Prisoner of War Number 21860: The World War II Memoirs of Oliver Omanson

“Στο στρατόπεδο έχουμε μαζέψει πολλά σκυλιά. Οι σκλάβοι τα κουβαλήσαν απόξω, απ' τα χωράφια που δουλεύαν. Είναι μια τρυφερότητα μες στην τραχιά ζωή τους. Τα πιο πολλά είναι αχαμνά-τρων ό,τι περισσεύει. Έχω κ' εγώ ένα. Ένα κοπρόσκυλο. Το λέμε Ναβουχοδονόσορ. Γιατί; Έτσι. Γιατί εγώ είμαι το "Νούμερο 31328";”
― Ηλίας Βενέζης, Το νούμερο 31328

“The British were especially good at complaining, something the Dutch and Americans never did.”
― J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

“If you can't change it don't worry about it.”
― David Barrett

“Guards punished anyone caught taking bones from the garbage by fastening the bone between his teeth, across his mouth, and then tying like a gag. "And then the poor fellow was made to fall down and crawl around on his hands and knees like a dog, a laughing stock for Federal soldiers, spies, and camp followers," Bean recalled bitterly.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“We also ate all the rats we could catch. No doubt many died after the war from disease contracted account of these things.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“The camp lived up to expectations as warmly dressed guards forced them to undress outside the gate where they searched them for valuables and weapons. The captives stood for a long time in ice and show on that grim December 5, numb and shaking, while guards robbed them, according to Copley. Chicago had now received prisoners from most major battlefields of the Civil War, except Gettysburg and Antietem.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“Add the shortage of blankets, warm clothing, and vegetables, and the result was likely to be more suffering and more death than had occurred earlier. The war was not over for Hood's army as it came through the gates of Camp Douglas. Another struggle for survival was beginning, and the odds of success were no better in Chicago than at Franklin or Nashville.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“The situation was fast approaching that of 1863, when Chicago doctors labeled the prison an extermination camp.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“Major Li Saiophong was the man who had held Jeff in captivity for over two months. He had subjected Fortner to a daily regimen of starvation, brutality and torture. He had never broken Lt. Fortner, USMC; though he had come close. Jeff had been rescued by his MACV-SOG team in September 1966. After their evac, the camp was napalmed, and Saiophong was thought to have perished in the conflagration. Knowing he still lived sent a chill up Fortner’s spine. His back still bore the scars of the ritualistic bamboo caning.”
― C.G. Faulkner, Solitary Man

“The one who learns to live in the prison is always free and the one who fights for freedom is always prisoned”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“A ramp was lowered, and the group was ordered to disembark from the car. Max was one of the first to exit—he looked left, then right, and saw that the train contained over twenty cares, filled with hundreds of prisoners, bound and chained, in a similar fashion to his group. All Jewish? He wondered.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“Max stuck his head out the passenger side window and yelled, “Open the gate, you idiots!” in perfect German. “I’ve got to get this car to Himmler.” The stunned gatekeepers rushed to open the gate, and the five men drove through it to freedom and into the history books.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“This may sound sexist,' Joslyn said, 'but my theory is that men like the Civil War because it's an action story, they're caught up in the battlefield drama. The prisoners are an emotional side of the War. Women are attracted to all that raw feeling, we understand it better....”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“The Germans did not like to use the searchlights, especially on nights when there were British bombing raids on nearby installations. Even the most uneducated German soldier could guess that from the air the sight of probing searchlights would make the camp appear to be an ammunition dump or a manufacturing plant, and some hard-pressed Lancaster pilot, having fought off frightening raids by Luftwaffe night fighters, might make an error and drop his stick of bombs right on top of them.

So the searchlight use was erratic, which only made them more terrifying to anyone who wanted to maneuver from one hut to another at night. It was difficult to time their sweeps because they were so haphazard.”
― John Katzenbach, Hart's War

“He shuddered at the idea of digging beneath the surface. It would be stifling, hot, filthy, and dangerous. The ferrets also occasionally commandeered a heavy truck, loaded it with men and material, and drove it, bouncing along, around the outside perimeter of the camp. They believed the weight would cause any underground tunnel to collapse. Once, more than a year earlier, they'd been right. He remembered the fury on Colonel MacNamara's face when the long days and nights of hard work were so summarily crushed.”
― John Katzenbach, Hart's War

“A prisoner of war is supposed to be in uniform, and he's supposed to provide his name, rank, and serial number, when demanded. A man in a suit of clothes carrying phony identity cards and forged work permits? That man could easily be taken for a spy. When do you stop being the one and start being the other?”
― John Katzenbach, Hart's War

“I had been a prisoner of war for about two and one-half years. At 20 years of age, it had been a lifetime of slavery -- an eternity of horror -- killings, beatings, sickness, starvation, and pain.
I reached the point of expecting nothing . . . and thoughts of the war coming to an end were far from my imagination. I couldn't remember what it was like to be free.
I had learned that true life is more than material possessions. Freedom and good health are the greatest gifts from God, and I would never take them for granted if I ever had the chance to enjoy them again.”
― Col. Glenn D. Frazier