- published: 05 Sep 2012
- views: 335954
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. Some non-combatant enemy personnel, such as merchant mariners and civil aircrews, were also considered prisoners of war.
Following General John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, several thousand British and German (Hessian and Brunswick) troops were marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts. For various reasons, the Continental Congress desired to move them south. One of Congress' members offered his land outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. The remaining soldiers (some 2,000 British, upwards of 1,900 German, and roughly 300 women and children) marched south in late 1778—arriving at the site (near Ivy Creek) in January 1779. Since the barracks were barely sufficient in construction, the officers were paroled to live as far away as Richmond and Staunton. The camp was never adequately provisioned, but the prisoners built a theater on the site. Hundreds escaped Albemarle Barracks because of the lack of guards. As the British Army moved northward from the Carolinas in late 1780, the remaining prisoners were moved to Frederick, Maryland; Winchester, Virginia; and perhaps elsewhere. No remains of the encampment site are left.
A prisoner of war (POW, PoW, PW, P/W, WP, PsW, enemy prisoner of war, (EPW) or "Missing-Captured" is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase is dated 1660.
Captor states hold captured combatants and non-combatants in continuing custody for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons. They are held to isolate them from combatants still in the field, to release and repatriate them in an orderly manner after hostilities, to demonstate military victory, to punish them, to prosecute them for war crimes, to exploit them for their labor, to recruit or even conscript them as their own combatants, to collect military and political intelligence from them, and to indoctrinate them in new political or religious beliefs.
For most of human history, depending on the culture of the victors, combatants on the losing side in a battle could expect to be either slaughtered or enslaved. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian and the Gaul (Gallus). Homer's Illiad describes Greek and Trojan soldiers offering rewards of wealth to enemies who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but this is not always accepted.
I have made a lasting picture among
The faces
The night hath plagued
Lost it all lie that your fathers
Have fought for am I the defiant
Along a saving grace
Neglected left to the dogs
Betrayed they've fed me to the fires
Places in fields where near sounds
Of terror
Fill our Ears; Vacant sounds
Consuming all around
Faces lost in the night swallowed
Amongst the decay
Lost in a time when we still felt
Alive the illusions has made us it's
Slave
Taken by the fear of Desolation
I stay awake throughout sounds of despair up holding my attention
Why has it all come to this?
This life has not finished. Help me
A simple man without needs
I have not lost my will to breathe
I'm not paying for your beliefs