206814 Pte. Raymond Chanel Dew New Zealand Army Dvr. 4th Reserve Mechanical Transport Company from:Otorohonga, New Zealand My father, Raymond Dew, served in the New Zealand Army 4th RMT as a driver from March 1941 in Egypt and Greece. On April 25th 1941 he landed by ship at Suda Bay, Crete, and was there until the Island capitulated on 1st June 1941. He was captured by the Germans after the fall of Crete and after months in POW camps in Greece he was transported by train to Lamsdorf, Poland,to Stalag VIIIB arriving in November 1941. He was on work parties on railway tracks at Opole and Gleiwitz, in a sugar beet factory and in a coal mine in the Hindenburg area. He was on the forced march from Lamsdorf from January to April 1945 and suffered malnutrition and frost bite of his toes. He was left at a Red Cross Barracks at Erfurt, Germany, by the Germans, then transported to Obermsafelt by train to a POW hospital. He weighed 6 stone when sent to England after the war and spent 18 months in hospital, initially in England, then on a hospital ship back to New Zealand, then in Christchurch, NZ. He had all his toes amputated and received pioneering treatment in plastic surgery to his feet. He died in 2007 at the age of 94.
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