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World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945

5th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment



   5th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment (The Buffs) was a territorial unit reformed in 1939. For the first few weeks of the Second World War, they served with 37th Brigade, 12th (Eastern) Division and transferred 36th Brigade, still with 12th Division. The Battalion saw action in France in 1940 and suffered heavy casualties. In 1942, the 36th Brigade joined 78th Division and the 5th Buffs saw action in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

   location map

3rd Sep 1939 Mobilisation  location map

1st of April 1940 Sickness report  location map

2nd of April 1940 Transport delivery  location map

3rd of April 1940 New CO  location map

4th of April 1940 Officers dinner

8th of April 1940 Instructions   location map

9th of April 1940 Instructions  location map

10th of May 1940 Field Return

11th of April 1940 Conference  location map

12th of April 1940 Administrative Instructions No.3   location map

12th of April 1940 Instructions  location map

12th of April 1940 Move preparation

13th of April 1940 Road party  location map

14th of April 1940 Sunday  location map

15th of April 1940   location map

16th of April 1940 Instructions  location map

16th of April 1940 Route march and review  location map

16th of April 1940 Nominal Roll of "A" Company

17th of April 1940 Preparation  location map

18th of April 1940 Preparation  location map

19th of April 1940 Move  location map

20th of April 1940 Arrival  location map

21st of April 1940 Settling in  location map

22nd of April 1940 Message  location map

22nd of April 1940 Training preparation  location map

23rd of April 1940 Training  location map

24th of April 1940 Training  location map

25th of April 1940 Training continues  location map

26th of April 1940 Training  location map

27th of April 1940 Inspection  location map

27th of April 1940 Field Return

28th of April 1940 Message   location map

28th of April 1940 Church parade  location map

29th of April 1940 Training  location map

29th of April 1940 Nominal Roll of Officers on Strength

30th of April 1940 Visit

1st of May 1940 Field Return  location map

15th of May 1940 Enemy Advance

16th of May 1940 Orders Recieved

17th of May 1940 On the Move

18th of May 1940 On the Move

19th of May 1940 Defences

20th of May 1940 Orders

5th of August 1940 Recommendations for awards (1/2 yearly 5th Bn. The Buffs)

22nd of December 1941 Recommendations for Awards

1st Apr 1943 Advance

2nd Apr 1943 On the March

3rd Apr 1943 On the Move

4th Apr 1943 At Rest

5th Apr 1943 At Rest

6th Apr 1943 On the Move

7th Apr 1943 Attack Made

7th Apr 1943 In Action

8th Apr 1943 Attack Made

8th Apr 1943 In Action

9th Apr 1943 Heavy Fighting

9th Apr 1943 Counter Attacks

10th Apr 1943 Aircraft Downed

11th Apr 1943 Reliefs

12th Apr 1943 On the Move

15th Apr 1943 Harsh Opposition

16th Apr 1943 New Position

17th Apr 1943 Shelling

18th Apr 1943 Shelling

19th Apr 1943 Shelling  location map

22nd Apr 1943 Attack Made

23rd Apr 1943 HQ Moves

24th Apr 1943 Shelling

26th Apr 1943 In Action

22nd Jun 1943 On the Move

6th Jul 1943 On the Move

31st Jul 1943 Under Fire

20th of September 1943 Message  location map

5th Oct 1943 In Action

6th Oct 1943 In Action

18th of May 1944 Advance  location map

19th of May 1944 Action  location map

20th of May 1944 Rest

22nd of May 1944 Reorganisation  location map

24th June 1944 Hard Fighting

16th of April 1945 Relief  location map

17th of April 1945 Rest  location map

18th of April 1945 Move  location map

19th of April 1945 Advance  location map

20th of April 1945 In action  location map

21st of April 1945 Rest  location map

22nd of April 1945 Mop up  location map


If you can provide any additional information, especially on actions and locations at specific dates, please add it here.



Those known to have served with

5th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment

during the Second World War 1939-1945.

  • Barber Cyril. Sgt
  • Body MC. Edward Hedley. Lt.Col.
  • Butler Maurice Arthur. Pte.
  • Cook Horace.
  • Drake Joseph William. Pte.
  • Gilbane James Francis. Pte.
  • Grindy Sydney. Pte.
  • Gurton Jack Lemuel. Pte. (d.9th October 1943)
  • Gwyther John Hedley. Cpl. (d.22nd Feb 1943)
  • Haggerty Bernard Cecil. Pte.
  • Horne Percy Cecil. L/Cpl (d.17th June 1940)
  • Hurrell Anthony. Pte. (d.19th May 1944)
  • Jones Bert.
  • Norris Frank Edward. Pte.
  • Orr John. Pte. (d.20th May 1940)
  • Overy William Henry Donald.
  • Peall Jim.
  • Pledger Bill.
  • Rogers Raymond E. H.. Pte.
  • Rutland Rupert Graham. Pte. (d.10th Apr 1944)
  • Sayer William Thomas Hillary. Pte.
  • Smith Robert Charles Henry. Pte. (d.3rd Nov 1943)
  • Spence Barton John. Cpl. (d.17th Dec 1944)
  • Thomas Llewelyn. Pte.
  • Turner Charles. (d.3rd Nov 1943)
  • Vidler Reginald. Pte.

The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

Records of 5th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment from other sources.



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Want to know more about 5th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment?


There are:2035 items tagged 5th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment available in our Library

  These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War.


Pte. Joseph William Drake 5th Btn. Royal East Kent Regiment

Joseph Drake was captured at Dunkirk.




Pte. Jack Lemuel Gurton 5th Btn. East Kent Regiment (d.9th October 1943)

Jack Lemuel Gurton cross

Jack Gurton served with the 5th Battalion, The Buffs.

Zoe Bridges



Sgt Cyril Barber 5th Btn Royal East Kent Regiment

Cyril Barber, my Dad, joined 5th Battalion, The Buffs Royal East Kent Regiment, on 18th of October 1939 and served throughout the war. He was discharged with the rank of Sergeant in February 1946.

On his discharge papers, the Commander of the 36th Infantry Brigade, Brigadier Musson, wrote of Cyril: "A man of initiative, cheerfulness and reliability. Of temperate habits and excellent behaviour. He has been employed in the responsible position of Provost Sergeant at Brigade HQ for over two years. He has seen active service overseas in France, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Austria and was awarded the Divisional Mark of Esteem in recognition of his good service."

Ian Barber



Pte. Reginald Vidler 5th Btn. Royal East Kent Regiment

Reginald Vidler served as a lorry driver with the 5th Battalion, Buffs in HQ Company. They left for France on the 19th of April 1940and arrived in Le Havre the following day. He was captured on the 20th of May 1940 and became POW number 10234 at Stalag XXB. His family received a POW Notification Letter on the 22nd of July 1940. He arrived back in Ashford, Kent on the 20th of May 1945.

Gary Vidler



Pte. William Thomas Hillary Sayer 5th Battalion Royal East Kent Regiment

Willam Sayer on the left.

My father, Bill Sayer didn't talk much of the war. I do know that he was wounded in North Africa, possibly in Tunis.

D Sayer



Pte. Frank Edward Norris 5th Btn. East Kent Regiment

Frank Norris was my father-in-law. He died in 1990 and never talked much about the war. It was only when I started researching my family tree that I found the little I have, and about his time at Stalag 4f where his PoW number was 261583.

Patrick Mckenzie



William Henry Donald Overy 5th Btn. Royal East Kent Regiment

Pte Bill Overy

Bill Overy was in the British Army, serving with the 5th Buffs, an East Kent Regiment. He joined the Territorials on the 3rd May 1939 when he was 24 and in April 1940 he went to France. In May they took up positions along the Arras-Doullens road to defend the town of Doullens. They had no backup troops to their rear or any aircraft for support. They had three Bren guns for which there had been little training and three 0.55 inch anti-tank rifles and one 2 inch mortar which unfortunately had no ammunition. All this to stem the onslaught of the 218 tanks of the 6th Panzer division, which overrun them on the 20 May 1940 and he was captured.

Following his capture they were all herded into a field with thousands of others of all nationalities where they stayed for about 3 or 4 days. When they moved off they received a black loaf, about 9 inches long, to share between six of them. They marched on for days often raiding empty houses to get food and wine to go with the turnips they collected from the fields. Eventually they arrived at a railway siding, where they were loaded into cattle trucks, 40 to a truck, with no ventilation, except for a narrow window about a foot square. They traveled for days through Luxembourg. Germany and Poland some days they ate and some days they didn't.

They arrived at Thorne in Poland to Prisoner of War camp Stalag XXA which was a large fort but the food was still bad consisting of one litre of watery soup at mid day and at tea time a loaf between five of them and ersatz coffee made from acorns.

POW`s Stalag XXa

About 20 men all from the Buffs, were sent to DANZIG in EAST PRUSSIA to work on farms and from there they were allowed to write a card home every two weeks. By Christmas 1940 they were moved to Stalag XXB at MARIENBURG in EAST PRUSSIA. It was very cold and the snow was deep and with no greatcoats it was very bad but for Christmas they had their first Red Cross parcels. They returned to Stalag XXA in the spring and then in the summer of 1941 moved to a new camp outside Thorne.

POW`s Stalag XXA

Parcels started to arrive from the Red Cross and from home, so what with these and they exchanged coffee, tea and chocolate with the Poles for white bread, eggs and cakes, life was fair. They got the bread and eggs past the guards by making pockets inside the lining of their coats and dropped the eggs down inside. They had concerts at night in the camp, also football, a lot of the players were professionals from big clubs back home in Britain. Every Sunday they had a church service.

POW`s put on a play, Stalag XXA

POW Football Team, Stalag XXA

In the spring of 1942 they were put on a farm work party in the village of GRUSSAUS GR SCHONWALDE near GROUDENS. They lived in a large house with two Polish families and the farmer and his wife and two children.

Bill Overy and a friend

They were split up into pairs to go onto the farms and the guards took them out at 6 in the morning and returned for them at 6 at night. A lot of things changed, they gave the women tea and coffee and showed them how to brew tea. The women did their washing, for which they paid them with soap, chocolate or cigarettes from their food parcels. Bill Overy made friends with John Whitticker from Derby who was the camp barber and they shared their Red Cross parcels so they went a lot further. They would often meet prisoners from other farms and exchanged news, much was wild rumors but it helped to keep up their moral.

Bill Overy (left) with two friends

During this time there was a new arrival, which was always a great event as they always had more news. He was Jack Imlack, a New Zealander who had been captured in Crete and was from camp Stalag XXB. He had been in a lot of trouble because he hated the Germans and one night a guard hit him with his rifle, so he hit him back and broke his jaw. For this he got 8 months in a civil jail and it nearly killed him, he was 16 1/2 stone when he went in and 8 stone when he came out. They took him in with them sharing their food parcels.

POW`s Stalag XXa

In the spring of 1944 they got hold of an old radio that they kept under the floorboards. Every morning two were left behind to clean the rooms while the guards took the rest to work. This gave them the opportunity to listen to the British news and write it down. When they delivered the milk later they would pass on the news to other areas.

So came the great day, 6th June 1944. Bill Overy was one doing the cleaning that morning and when they put the radio they found out the Allies had landed in France. They could not believe it and as luck would have it, they did not write it down or pass it on they just could not believe it. When they got back to the fields they told the others, forgetting some of the Poles had learnt a bit of English. By that night the entire village knew. Of course the guards didn't know, they were not told until two days later, so where did the news come from? Their rooms were turned upside down but they found nothing and the Poles kept quiet. Later that week three of them were returned to Stalag XXA with their corporal. When the corporal was being interrogated they heard all he said from the next room so they were all able to tell the same story. They said they had heard the officer in charge of the guard talking about it. That was that, they went back to Schonwalde and the officer went to the Russian front. All mail from home stopped from July 1944 and food parcels came only one a month, so their food had to be rationed. Winter came and in November it started to snow and the temperature was 20 degrees below zero.

Group of POW`s Stalag XXA

Early in 1945 they were told they would be leaving at the weekend and they would be walking. So they got rid of all excess baggage, except food, their spare shoes and clothes they gave to the Poles. The three of them made a sledge to carry their food and on the Saturday they left, pulling their sledge, to a camp called Possen. The journey there was not too bad, plenty of snow but at night the guards found them shelter in a barn, as there was only twelve of them. Food was a problem though as their food parcels were very low. It took four days to reach the camp that was an assembly area for all the working parties in the area. They stayed for two days waiting for everyone to arrive then they each were given two Red Cross parcels and they loaded their sledge and started on their way. There were about 400 British and 200 Russians and 25 guards and 6 dogs. The German officer rode in a small buggy pulled by two horses. They had a short rest every two hours, which was not too bad at the beginning but then some started to lag behind. The Germans turned their sledges over and hit them with their rifles and made them leave everything. One night they spent in the open in a football ground, and in the morning they left quite a few behind frozen in the snow. Even if they sheltered in a barn, they never took their boots off as they would freeze solid and it would be impossible to put them on again. As food became scarce the Germans killed some horses to make soup and at one of the place they caught a rabbit, which they killed and ate raw.

The snow was nearly gone by the time they arrived in STETTEN and crossed the river into Germany but it was still very cold and the rain meant they slept in wet clothes at night. At this point they left the Russians behind. Days did not seem to matter anymore. Walking, walking and more walking. One day they arrived at a farm where there were about 200 British POWs, they were in a terrible state with dysentery and typhus and they were dying like flies. The guards were scared stiff so they quickly moved them on. The Germans started to get trigger-happy and two lads were shot trying to pick up potatoes and another when he relieved himself during the night. And still they walked on, first one way, then another, until they reached the town of CELLE. In HAMBURG they were put into huts near the station. That night the station was bombed but none of them were killed. The guards did not know where go, so they started to take them south into Germany while the sound of gunfire got closer. At this point Bill, John and Jack thought they had had enough so they planned to make a break for it when they moved off. After about an hour they dived into a wood but the Germans sent the dogs after them and they were recaptured. John had been hit around the head with a rifle that split his ear and when they next stopped, they were trying a bit of first aid when the British NCO, in charge, told them the guards had gone.

So at last they were free, after 5 years. The change that came over them was unbelievable. Where it had been every man for himself, now those who had cigarettes shared with everybody else. It was a wonderful feeling. Of the 400 who had started out on the march, less that 200 were left. Not all had died, a lot had been taken into hospital on the way but it was still a shock.

They were told to tidy up and were soon busy shaving and washing, as best as they could. The NCO's went to look around and when they returned they said the Americans were down the road and as they were still in the British Army would march into town. Then they were taken by truck to the British main depot at a place called Hereford about 4 hours drive away and then to Munster and flown to Brussels. That night in Brussels they went to the Churchill Club for their first taste of English beer in five years. The next day they boarded another Lancaster for England and home.

Bill Overy



Pte. Sydney Grindy 5th Btn. Royal East Kent Regiment

My father - Private 6286696 Sydney Grindy of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment). He served with the 1st, 2nd and 5th Battalion between 1937-45. He was taken prisoner at Le Milliard on 24th May 1940. He was confined in Stalag XXA at Thorn (9/6/40 - 16/4/41) Stalag XXB at Marienberg (18/4/41 - 17/5/43) Stalag XXA at Thorn (27/11/43 - 23/1/45). He was also posted to the following work camps - Elbing Camp from 20/5/41 - 17/2/42 and Konitz Camp from 11/4/44 - 23/1/45. I am particularly keen to trace any members of the regiment who may have been confined with my father during this period.

I wish I had listened more to my father on the few occasions he spoke about his experiences in the camps. Much of what I have read on the memories page (which is excellent) I remember my father speaking about when I was young. I only wish I had been able to record this information, as many of the contributors to your excellent memories page have already done. As a family we are desperate to contact people - of any nationality - who may have know my father during his time as a POW. Can any one help in some way or offer us some advise?

Susan Grindy



Jim Peall 5th Btn. East Kent Rgt (The Buffs)

Jim Peall served with the 5th Btn East Kent Regiment (The Buffs) and was present at Doullens during WWII.




Bill Pledger 5th Btn. East Kent Rgt (The Buffs)

Bill Pledger served with the 5th Btn East Kent Regiment (The Buffs) and was present at Doullens during WWII.










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