For ‘ALL Who were Captured’? The Evolution of National Ex-prisoner of War Associations in Britain after the Second World War

Abstract

Veterans' associations after the Second World War have received very little attention from historians despite the insight they can provide into postwar societies. This article draws upon the literature published by national ex-prisoner of war (POW) associations formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, to examine the significance attached by different groups of British ex-POWs to their wartime incarceration. This literature shows how an early attempt to create one POW association for all who were captured failed. Associations subsequently founded for Far East ex-POWs successfully created an inclusive ‘fictive kinship group’ and their activities challenge recently established discourses that these prisoners were a ‘forgotten army’. By contrast, kinship groups that developed among ex-POWs held in Italy and Germany were fostered by certain criteria in addition to the common one of having been held in captivity. The article concludes by identifying the conditions conducive to the formation of fictive kinship groups among POWs.

Keywords:

• memory
• shared narratives
• veteran associations
• FEPOWs
• war compensation
• fictive kinship

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Midge Gillies, Lucy Noakes, Lizzie Oliver, Juliette Pattinson, Wendy Ugolini and John Siblon for their comments and suggestions. With thanks also to John K. Banfield, Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of the Royal Air Forces Ex-PoW Association, for sharing with me the work of the Association.

Notes on contributor

Clare Makepeace is a Teaching Fellow at University College London. In 2013, she completed her doctorate on the subjectivities of British prisoners of war held in Germany and Italy during the Second World War. She has published on the social relationships of prisoners of war in the Second World War, masculinity and prostitution in the First World War, and eugenics and feminism in the interwar years.

Correspondence to: Clare Makepeace, Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT. Email: [email protected].

Notes

1 This is out of a total of 3388 RAF POWs who were held in Japan compared to 9727 who were prisoners in Germany (Anon, 1951c: 13). Seven members were prisoners in the first Gulf War (1990–1991) (Banfield, 2012).