The Russians and the Germans

During World War I, Russian soldiers took Waldo Bahmann and two other German soldiers prisoner on September 2, 1916. The Russians treated the Germans well, and a Russian officer asked each German soldier for the address of his relatives, saying that he would send the addresses to his parents, who lived in Petrograd, and they would send the addresses to the Red Cross, who would let their families know that they were alive. The Russian officer said, “Then your dear ones will not have such prolonged fear and anxiety, for nothing is more terrible than the report ‘missing.’” In 1918, after Mr. Bahmann had returned home after being released from captivity, he looked through some of his mother’s documents, and he found a postcard from Russia that announced that he had been captured, but was in good health in Russia. Mr. Bahmann’s mother had received the postcard before
the Red Cross had gotten around to him, so the source of the information had to come from the Russian officer’s parents.

Source: Reinhard Diebold, collector and editor, The Book of Good Deeds:
1914-1918, pp. 234-236.