Reminiscences of a World War II prisoner of war:
As prisoners, we came to find that we were amazed by the liberating power of an increasing realization that our captors were truly men who did not know what they were doing. We developed a kind of pity for our dangerously erratic guards because they and their masters seemed to us to be the prisoners in some deep, ancient oubliette of the human spirit, and we the free in hearts and minds. In this there was no sense of personal virtue. All thought of virtue would have perished instantly in remembrance of the dead....
Here then the relevant statistics [about the camp in which the writer was imprisoned]: Wing Commander Nichols—a great prison commander—and I, with a remarkable nucleus of officers and men of all three services, brought some 2,000 men out of prison. Nichols said he could count on the fingers of two hands those who were bitter and unforgiving.
