Prisoners endure a great variety of privations, depending on who is holding them prisoner and what the resources of the capturing country happen to be. In some cases, simply surviving is a testimony to the prisoner's will. Lack of food and other essentials, torture, extremely long periods of captivity, or extreme weather conditions can lay low the strongest person. Often the survivors are not the obviously strong ones, but those who simply refuse to give up.
What brought all this on was another book. The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz (1956, 1984, Lyons and Burford, New York) is the true story of Slavomir Rawicz, a Polish cavalry Lieutenant who was imprisoned by the Soviets in 1939, after the partition of Poland. His story epitomizes the attitudes of the "escaper" from any war or time.
An escaper is a special kind of person. Their drive for freedom is absolute. It is the central feature of their personalities once they become prisoners. They keep trying to find a way out, usually regardless of the cost to themselves. Rawitcz' story simply shows what extreme privation this drive will overcome.
After fighting against the Germans in the invasion of Poland, Rawicz returned to his home near the Soviet border. He was arrested by the Cheka (secret police) and eventually convicted of the crime of being a spy, essentially because he was in the military and he did live near the border. (In our modern experience in the U.S., we have nothing to compare this to; the institutionalized kidnaping of thousands of people to create slave labor, on pretenses so ludicrous it would be funny if it weren't for the serious consequences. It's often difficult for us to accept that these things have happened in the past, and that they still happen in various corners of the world.) Once convicted, he was transported to a labor camp in Siberia to serve his twenty five year sentence.
The trip to his destination was an epic in itself, and helped prepare him for the rigors of his later escape. Across the Soviet Union by train, in an open slatted boxcar, in the winter, dressed in their prison clothing of slippers and thin cotton trousers and pants. In the middle of winter. The cars were packed so full that NO ONE was able to lie down. It took the cooperation of your neighbor to create enough room to raise an arm to scratch your nose. There were no sanitary facilities other than a nightly stop along the tracks to rest the train crew and bury the dead. On arrival at the end of the rail line, the prisoners were issued basic quilted jackets and pants, with insulated boots, shackled to long chains attached to trucks and began a march north. They slept each night in the open, with whatever shelter they could achieve by digging into the snow, and continued until the trucks were unable to go on. Then the guards drafted locals with dog sleds to lead the prisoners even further north, where they finally found their camp.
