Escape and evasion map printed on playing cards distributed to Prisoners of War which could be soaked and pealed apart revealing the escape map. Many of the maps of the Pacific region were printed by the US Army Map Service, while the UK was responsible for many of the European Theatre maps. Many of the US Navy charts were folded in envelopes and distributed to the air crews before a mission, and to be turned in when the mission was successfully completed. They were called "drift charts" by the Navy, "...since their prime purpose was to indicate to aircrews survivors in their life rafts
Attempts to escape Oflag IV-C some misapprehensions to the contrary, Colditz Castle was not used as a prisoner of war camp in World War I. Prisoners contrived a number of methods to escape. They duplicated keys to doors, made copies of maps, forged "Ausweise" (identity papers), and manufactured their own tools. MI9, a department of the British War Office which specialized in escape equipment, communicated with the prisoners in code and smuggled to them new escape aids disguised in care packages from family or from non-existent charities, although they never tampered with Red Cross care packages for fear it would force the Germans to stop