218133 Gdsmn Stanley George Kirkman British Army Irish Guards from:Knottingham Guardsman Stanley George Kirkman, member of the Irish Guards, was at Stalag 357. We believe he was captured at Anzio after serving in North Africa, but we are not sure. We don't know if he was in other camps. He rarely spoke of his time at the camp, like many here. It haunted him for the rest of his life, though the few tales he would tell us of camp were of the "laughs." I know from reading that his time there had very few of those. For the rest of his life, he could not stand small spaces, foods that were "mixed" (stews, soups, anything he couldn't tell what was in it), or the idea of being confined.
We know he was at Stalag 357 in August 1944 because one of the few mementos of his time at war is a letter to my grandfather dated from that camp. He wrote of his fellow POWs being able to find a "tin of salmon some Sundays" and he would speak sometimes of bartering Red Cross packets with American POWs at the camp (he said that their packets were better!). He was also learning to play baseball, thanks to the Yanks.
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