STA LAG .

[Deleted]

there was a POW Camp at Cu Chi it housed 25 POW's , same 25 been there for quite awhile , their job was to fall out and look mean for visiting dignitaries , Congress people and the like , they were paraded in NVA uniforms and many visitors became titillated being so close to the bad guy , thing about it was they were prisoners allright but none of them were NVA all were VC , even NEWS crews when their bosses gouged them hard enough would come up from Saigon and film the POW's , most of the time the POW's laid up in their cots eating ice cream and watching Armed Forces Network .

[Sir John]

"most of the time the POW's laid up in their cots eating ice cream and watching Armed Forces Network ."



No doubt about it, the Yanks are just a bunch of old softies.


SJ

[Sir John]

I thought "STALAG" was a German word?

[Deleted]

Stalag sounds better than stockade .

[Deleted]

Colonel Blimp became confused one night thought he was going into the club but wandered into the STALAG , His citation read on the night of xxx Colonel Blimp singled handily fended off 25 the of the most vicious and violent of the enemy as he stumbled in to the TV they were watching , Blimp in the highest order of the military executed his retreat in haste .

[Sir John]

Stalag Luft 3.

Scene of The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse.


SJ

[Deleted]

Didn't Colonel Jerry play a role in that film he was cast as a Signal Officer , something he knew nothing about but he did a bang up job of it .

[Sir John]

Nope, that was WW1.

[mcnoch]

Stalag is the German abbrevation for Stammlager - main camp, it could also be the hq-unit for a number of smaller, satellite camps. And while there existed some stalags under control of the Luftwaffe, there was never one for the Navy or SS, even when both organisations staffed some units guarding Stalags.

[Sir John]

For Matthias,

An anecdote you may be interested in.

I am/was a family history researcher, and one of my many 'branches' had a transported convict from England who ended up in a small gold mining town (now a 'ghost town' in central Victoria called 'Greytown'.

I walked all over that area of thick 'scrub' to find the old cemetery, and near there I found the old foundations of a POW camp. It was one of many in the general area holding German, Italian, and Japanese POWs. This particular camp was a German one that housed the crew of the German raider, the 'Kormoran'. I did some further research, and found a long report on the daily activities in the camp.

The sailors were engaged in wood cutting and clearing, and one day the CO had a message to say that one of the sailors had lost his entire family in the bombing of Germany.

The CO advised him, and allowed him to take some belongings into the bush to "gather his thoughts". He came back 2 days later.

Escape would have been a waste of time, and both men knew it.

and,

A nearby Italian camp was sited beside an irrigation channel, and the Italians could not believe the standard of the food was so good, and could not last. They daily took a few cans of food and tossed them into the channel to keep for the bad times they felt were inevitable. After the war they fished out FIVE tons of cans. Most of those POWs took their repatriation home, and immediately came back as (refugee) migrants. The area is now a major Italian community.



SJ

[mcnoch]

I think that the prison camps are a very interessting, but under-represented historical topic.

[Deleted]

Germany had some interesting Stalags Aushwitz , Bergan-Belsen and several others .

[Deleted]

SJ your description could be of the Japanese POW camp at Cowra NSW where the prisoners decided to escape and many were shot dead, it is now a sacred site and Japan built a beautiful Japanese garden there which is now a tourist attraction.

[Deleted]

Is NSW close to Japan has to be or the Japs wouldn't have tried to escape , would they ? .

[Sir John]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowra_breakout

I doubt this happened anywhere else in wartime.



SJ