Hors de combat

Hors de combat (ɔʁ də kɔ̃ba; out of combat) is a French term used in diplomacy and international law to refer to persons who are incapable of performing their combat duties during war. Examples include persons parachuting from their disabled aircraft, as well as the sick, wounded, detained, or otherwise disabled. Persons hors de combat are normally granted special protections according to the laws of war, sometimes including prisoner-of-war status, and therefore officially become non-combatants. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, unlawful combatants hors de combat are granted the same privilege and to be treated with humanity while in captivity but unlike lawful combatants, they are subject to civilian trial and punishment (which may include capital punishment if the detaining power has such a punishment for the crimes they have committed). Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions defines: A person is hors de combat if: (a) he is in the power of an adverse Party; (b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or (c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself; provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Froggy Parker as Amory Blaine flirted with Isabelle in This Side of Paradise: On her right Froggy was hors de combat already, although he hadn't quite realized it. Baroness Orczy wrote in her novel The Scarlet Pimpernel: When we find them, there will be a band of desperate men at the bay. Some of our men, I presume, will be put hors de combat. These royalists are good swordsmen, and the Englishman is devilish cunning, and looks very powerful. Kurt Vonnegut described himself as hors de combat on the title page of his famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five: ...who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden...