Walter, your observation that, despite the privations of being a POW, your chances of your survival had you not been captured would probably have been much reduced are surely correct. Life is a gamble anyway, but in war the odds can swing violently either way. Your last sentences are sad confirmation of that.
Unlike WW1 for the UK, WW2 was truly a peoples war, when it could come suddenly and devastatingly to anyone anywhere. The few exceptions in WW1 merely confirm that general observation I would suggest.