Between the devil and the deep blue sea - University of Canterbury

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front. In fact, a number of Belgian medics stayed in the Netherlands to assist sick and
wounded Belgian intemees?6
Another group of foreign soldiers present were prisoners of war. In 1915, Germany
and Britain agreed to exchange sick and wounded POWs via the Netherlands. In 1917, they
also allowed up to 16,000 POWs to be interned by the neutral. 27 The Dutch treated the
POW s somewhat differently from other internees because their entry into the country was
not based on a breach of neutrality and many of them were injured. They were usually
housed in private lodgings, hotels or specially-built barracks, rather than the larger
impersonal intemment facilities, although the Dutch military continued to supervise their
comings and goings and limited their movements to particular cities. The British POW s
lived mainly in and around Scheveningen, as well as in Leeuwarden and Nijmegen, while
the Gennans lodged in Rotterdam, Dieren, Wolfheze, Hattem, Amhem, and Noordwijk. 28
Other prisoners of war also found their way to the Netherlands during the war.
Many Allied soldiers escaped from POW camps in Gennany and managed to reach the
Dutch border. 29 While the Dutch could have refused entry, they rarely did so for obvious
humanitarian reasons. 30 On letting the POWs into the country, they were then obliged to
give them right of passage home. 31 If the escapees were unable to retum home or chose to
stay, then the neutral could assign lodgings and, like the exchange POW s mentioned above,
limit their movements within certain municipalities?2 These same rules applied to a number
of Gennan POW s retuming home from imprisonment in Britain, who fled from the official
exchange trains while travelling through the Netherlands. 33 They did not wish to retum
home to face, by 1917 at least, severe food shortages and the possibility of serving at the
front again.
26 Vries, "Nederland als non-belligerente natie" p. 92.
27 Oranjeboek: Mededeelingen van den Minister van Buitenlandsche Zaken aan de Staten-Generaal December 1916
- April 1918 [Announcements of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Estates-General December 1916 - April 1918]
publication details missing, 1918, p. 77 (SMG); Nagelhout, "De toelating en internering van belligerente troepen" p.
24; Roodt, "De uitwisseling en internering" p. 1.
28 Klinkert, "Internering van vreemde militairen" pp. 2455 - 2456; Roodt, "De uitwisseling en internering" p. 9;
Roodt, Oorlogsgasten pp. 296 - 298.
29 For more on the escapees, see: pp. 182 -183 below.
30 Castren, The Present Lm\! of War and Neutrality pp. 467 - 468.
31 Article 13 of"1907 Hague Convention V" in Roberts et. al. (eds.), Documents on the Laws of War p. 65.
32 Nagelhout, "De to elating en internering van belligerente troepen" p. 21.
33 Private correspondence with Susanne Wolf, May 2000.