At least four, and possibly five, Australian prisoners of war in Axis custody volunteered for the British Free Corps (BFC), a Waffen-SS unit. Three of the four men whose identity is known were members of the Second Australian Imperial Force's 2/32nd Battalion, and the other was a merchant seaman. Following the war the three soldiers claimed that they had joined the BFC as part of attempts to escape from German custody, and the merchant seaman stated that he had been given a choice of either signing up for the Corps or being imprisoned in a concentration camp after a relationship with a German woman was revealed.