Donnachaidh:
Don wants to get into civilized neighborhoods and make a request for letting the prisoners go. He has no capability whatsoever to help all the prisoners without the help from the Red Cross or a friendly force of some kind.
I think I need to restate the global situation. The world is essentailly in a state of anarchy with all organisations in total chaos. Governments (what little there is left of them) are only in control of the area that their troops are presently encamped upon. The Red Cross disolved in the early months of 1998, totally unable to cope with the massive amounts of casualties from both the initial nuclear exchanges and then the raging outbreaks of plagues and starvation. Any aid workers that survived the nuclear strikes were far too busy surviving themselves to even contemplate helping others.
The nearest comfirmed friendly forces that are not either captured or surounded were last reported to be several hundred kilometres away and in no position to come to the aid of the US 5th ID (your unit). The NATO offensive stalled and was then (actually still happening) pushed back by the completely unexpected Warsaw Pact counter offensive.
You are presently in a position of tremendous danger and this will not change for quite some time, depending on your actions and direction of travel. The only area that is believed to not be in Pact control (at least up till your capture) is towards the south - the direction in which the Divisional commander had ordered the attempted breakout. Every other direction for what can be presumed to be at least 100km is crawling with both Polish and Soviet troops.
Directly south from this point is a forest that could offer some protection and concealment but the Polish 6th Cavalry, of whom you are presently "guests", has been tasked to flush out and capture any US stragglers.