Peter Hart: I'm out; Escape from German POW camps in WW1

While officers were exempt from labouring for their captors, 80% of the 170,000 British POWs held by the Germans faced more challenges than boredom. Always hungry, they worked, were frequently subjected to vicious beatings and faced a litany of casual cruelties. While 54 officers and 519 other ranks managed to escape (largely to neutral Holland), a similar number were killed by their guards (there were over 12,000 deaths overall).