you know you hear old stories about women and young boys dressing up as men to join the military. During either of the world wars, or maybe even before, did any of the world powers have any official special rules for what you were supposed to do if a POW turned out to be either under 18 or women?

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AThinker2

Boy Soldiers is the title given to children who fought in both World Wars, and the youngest known was a boy of 12 who fought at the Battle of the Somme is a British soldier to have served in the First World War.

Truth be told, there's not a whole lot of information about any sort of special treatment for children POWs. The only common topic about them are such things as their lies to get into the military, what battles they went through, and if they survived. For the most part, no, most of them either didn't survive, or were shipped home once their true age was revealed. There'll be a few links below about Boy Soldiers for people to sift through and learn a bit.

Now women were treated differently as a POW. There's even a sort of international law with rules on how to proceed with them.

From 1929 onward, women have enjoyed special protection under international humanitarian law. In that year, the Powers which adopted the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War sought to take into account a new phenomenon: the participation of a relatively large number of women in the war of 1914-1918. This international legal instrument contained two provisions of particular interest: "Women shall be treated with all consideration due to their sex". "Differences of treatment between prisoners are permissible only if such differences are based on the military rank, the state of physical or mental health, the professional abilities, or the sex of those who benefit from them".

Since the number of women in WW1 was small, they didn't receive as much of a protection as they did in WW2. Granted, they still had some protection, but they didn't have as much of an impact other than being a nurse. Please note, I'm not trying to demean women, just jotting down what I'm reading. In WW2, however, women played a pivotal role in much of the daily life on the battlefields of WW2. Inasmuch, when women were captured by the enemy they were often times tossed into the camps with all the men. If they were found to be a woman, one of two things would have happened. 1) They would be placed in a separate holding facility (some were able to help the male POWs), or 2) Become a sex slave for enemy soldiers and/or officers.

It really depended on which battlefield the nurses were sent to. If they were captured by the Japanese, they were either killed for sport, or used as sex slaves. If it was against the Germans or Soviets, you had a better chance of surviving. Mainly because, for the most part, they treated enemy female combatants with a bit more respect and they, somewhat, followed the rules set by the Geneva Convention.

Women POWs:

https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jmfj.htm

http://www.historynet.com/soviet-prisoners-of-war-forgotten-nazi-victims-of-world-war-ii.htm

http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/pow/pow-jap.html NOTE: This link will hurt your eyes, as it is a blue background with yellow text.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/72-14/72-14.HTM

Boy Soldiers:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/boy_soldiers.htm

http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/ww2-pow.html NOTE: This link will hurt your eyes, as it is a blue background with yellow text.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcvdhyc

https://www.pinterest.com/john458/boy-soldiers-world-war-1/