For one thing, remember that each Armed Service looked after prisoners from its opposite number. Thus, RCAF, RAF, USAAF, RAAF, RRAF, RSAAF, RIAF, RNZAF men serving in Europe and captured would have been turned over to the Luftwaffe for interrogation, processing, transportation, housing, Red Cross registration and so forth. Naval prisoners would have been turned over to the Kriegsmarine, Army prisoners to the Heer. Each Service maintained its own system of Assembly Camps, Transit Camps (Durchlager) and Branch Camps (Stammlager or"Stalag").
Jerry had only the one fair-sized Naval camp, attempted to downsize the Army camps after June, 1940..... but the Luftwaffe camps just grew and grew. Yes, prisoners WERE released from time to time: even the Danish Royal Bodyguard troops, who fought very hard and were NOT in Hitler's "good book" were released in 1942 and 1943, by which time many French troops were long gone. In special cases, prisoners might be returned to their own belligerant country while the war still was going on, generally using neutral Portugal as the transit country, Switzerland being landlocked.
It was all very organised and not much at all like in the movies. "The Great Escape" is quite true to the actual conditions in a Stalag: the man who wrote the original book, who had ample opportunity to talk with people who were there, was an advisor on making the film.
Thing is, this system operated on BOTH SIDES, with prisoners segregated by Service on our side, in entirely separate camp structures on Jerry's side.
If a man were captured with a side-arm, it would be the first (and most ticklish) thing he lost. MUCH better to guard your scarves (with maps printed into them), your bootlaces (pliable hacksaws), your uniform buttons (especially the on holding the compass) and ll the rst of the "escape gear" with which so many were outfitted.
That said, I DID once own an Enfield revolver, a very nice Numbr 2 Mark 1 built in 1931...... with "R.A.F." very professionally engraved into the frame.
So they do exist. How much USE was made of them is another matter. Only man I ever knew who actually fought his way out of capture used a rock and his bare hands, came home (through Spain and Portugal) with a P-38 which Fritz didn't need any longer. He was a B-25 pilot of some considerable note, the FIRST pilot to bale out of a crippled Mitchell and live to tell about it. (Getting out of a Mitchell was regarded as impossible for the Pilot, but he worked it out, had a tiny Sterling silver B-25 lapel pin to prove it..... given to him by North American Aircraft. The Air Force gave him 2 weeks' leave and a brand-new Mitchell, told him to go do it again.)
