Time to pay for POWs
Sir: The Under-secretary of State for Defence in his report on the review of deductions made from the pay of officer POWs during the second world war admits that no money was paid either to the Ger- man or Italian governments on the cessa- tion of hostilities — which had been the purpose of the deductions in the first place.
He claims that repayments were made to many officers, but I am amongst a very large number who received nothing. He now rejects any further payments partly on the grounds that . . we no longer have the pay records of the servicemen from this period. . . . ' There must, however, be some record of the money deducted and what became of it. The only honourable way to end this long dispute would be for the gov- ernment to hand over that money in equal amounts to all the Service charities.
Derek Bond
Brook House, 7 Woodlands Road, London SW13
Previous page
