The Wartime Memories Project

- Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 66 Prisoner of War Camp during the Second World War -


POW Camp Index
skip to content


This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.


If you enjoy this site

please consider making a donation.




    Site Home

    WW2 Home

    Add Stories

    WW2 Search

    Library

    Help & FAQs


 WW2 Features

    Airfields

    Allied Army

    Allied Air Forces

    Allied Navy

    Axis Forces

    Home Front

    Battles

    Prisoners of War

    Allied Ships

    Women at War

    Those Who Served

    Day-by-Day

    Library

    The Great War

 Submissions

    Add Stories

    Time Capsule

    TWMP on Facebook



    Childrens Bookshop

 FAQ's

    Help & FAQs

    Glossary

    Volunteering

    Contact us

    News

    Bookshop

    About


Advertisements











World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945

Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 66 Prisoner of War Camp





    If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.



    Those known to have been held in or employed at

    Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 66 Prisoner of War Camp

    during the Second World War 1939-1945.

    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 from Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 66 Prisoner of War Camp other sources.



    The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

    Announcements



    • The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 24 years. If you would like to support us, a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting and admin or this site will vanish from the web.
    • 28th March 2024 - Please note we currently have a huge backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263784 your information is still in the queue, please do not resubmit, we are working through them as quickly as possible.
    • Looking for help with Family History Research?   Please read our Family History FAQ's
    • The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.
      If you enjoy this site

      please consider making a donation.


    Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the War? Our Library contains an ever growing number diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.



    We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates.

    If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.


    Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to WW2. We would like to obtain digital copies of any documents or photographs relating to WW2 you may have at home.

    If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted. World War 1 One ww1 wwII second 1939 1945 battalion
    Did you know? We also have a section on The Great War. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.



    Want to know more about Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 66 Prisoner of War Camp?


    There are:-1 items tagged Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 66 Prisoner of War Camp 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.


    GH Vaughton 5th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment

    GH Vaughton served with the 5th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    LA Riley 4th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment

    LA Riley served with the 4th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    HL Jenkins 44th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment

    HL Jenkins served with the 44th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    Tpr. George Edwin Hill 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps

    George Hill served with the 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps and the Leicester Regiment. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    Patrick F Deasy 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps

    Patrick F Deasy served with the 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    L/Cpl. John Darby Benson 4th Queens Own Hussars

    L/Cpl.John Benson served with the 4th Queens Own Hussars British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    L/Cpl. John Murray Aitken 2nd Sqd Lothian and Border Horse

    L/Cpl.John Aitken served with the 2nd Sqd Lothian and Border Horse British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    Albert Pearson Leicestershire Regiment

    My late father, Albert Pearson was a prisoner in Stalag IVB, prisoner number 227929. He arrived there via camp 66, Capua, Italy. He was in the Leicestershire Regiment, number 4868471, captured in North Africa early in 1943.

    He spoke very little about his time in the camps, but he did say they woke one morning to find the German guards gone, and lots of Russians on horseback. He and two others then spent some time roaming around the area, spending some time in a railway station. On one occasion a local family with several daughters offered them shelter, my Dad felt this was to try to protect themselves from the Russians. They declined the offer, also fearful of the Russians. They were later rounded up by the Americans and brought back to England. I'm not sure how.

    I would be very interested if any one knew him or could fill in some of the missing information. Thank you.

    Mick Pearson



    Earnest Cooper Leicestershire Regiment

    My late father; Earnest Cooper, 4868237, Leicestershire Regt was captured in North Africa after the Battle of Kasserine (1943) and was first imprisoned in PG66 at Capua, then transferred to Stalag XVIIB following the Italian armistice.

    Ian Cooper



    Drv. Edward Webster Royal Signals

    Edward Webster was captured by the Italians in Mechili, Libya on 8th of April 1941. He was first interned at Capua POW camp (date unknown), then at the Gruppignano POW Camp on 24th of July 1941, and then transferred to C.C.N. 53 P.M. 3300 Camp on 2nd of September 1943. Finally, he was transferred to Stalag VIIB in Germany.

    Kathryn Burford



    Sgt. Alfred "Tom" Thomas Coldstream Guards

    Alfred Thomas, Coldstream Guards

    Two Stalag 344 German guards who were twin brothers

    My father Alfred Thomas served in Palestine before the war. On 13th April 1939 he was back in Egypt, where he stayed until another tour of duty in Palestine starting on 27th of May 1940. With the Second World War now well under way, Tom was posted back to Egypt on 27th of June 1940 to face the Italians and, later, Rommel's Afrika Korps.

    The Italians under Marshal Graziano launched a limited invasion of Egypt in September 1940, going as far as Sidi Barrani about 50 miles across the border from Libya, where they stopped and fortified the area. This gave General Wavell time to reorganise his forces before going on the counter-attack in Operation Compass, which began on the 7th/8th December 1940 and lasted until 7th February 1941. At that point, the Italians having lost, Sidi Barrani, the port of Bardia, Tobruk, and Benghazi surrendered south of Beda Fomm. During Operation Compass, 133,298 Italian soldiers were captured along with a large number of guns and tanks. The British now halted their attack, having to send troops to Greece. On 12th of February, Rommel flew to Tripoli ahead of his troops, who arrived on the 14th. Rommel almost immediately went on the offensive and by 24 March had taken El Agheila, which was the leading British position. He then advanced on Mersa el Brega, which fell on 31st of March. The British were by now in chaotic retreat with Benghazi falling on 4th of April. The only place holding out against Rommel’s forces was Tobruk.

    My father probably fought in both campaigns, but it was during the retreat from Rommel's forces that on 27th of May 1941 he was reported as missing and only later as having been taken prisoner. It is possible that this was while defending the Halfway Pass from the German advance. My father rarely talked about his wartime experience, but he did believe that he remained alive when taken prisoner due to the fact that Rommel showed up around that time, which ensured that prisoners were treated correctly.

    Prisoners of war tend to be written out of history apart from a few sensational cases of escape. These escapes were rarely successful and the reprisals could be life threatening. Many POWs were traumatised by their experiences and treatment, along with feelings of guilt for being captured. The first record of Tom, after he was shipped out of North Africa to Italy, was of being interned in Italian POW camp number 66. This camp was in Capua, a few miles south of Naples. It was situated on a vast plain that offered views of the Vesuvius volcano. When the Allies invaded Sicily on 10 July and Southern Italy on 3rd of September 1943, POWs would have been moved north as the Allies advanced. Apparently, when the Italians stopped their participation in the war, they withdrew their guards from the POW camps. This gave an opportunity for prisoners to escape. However, a secret branch of the Ministry of Defence (known as MI9) ordered that British POWs in Italy should remain in their camps after Italy surrendered. Many senior officers within the camps enforced this. As a result of this, the German army was able to walk into dozens of camps and round up the POWs.

    Eventually, Tom ended up in Poland at Stalag 344 Lamsdorf (formerly Stalag VIIIB) in Silesia. This was a large German POW camp located in the small town of Lamsdorf, now called Lambinowice in Poland, that was initially built during WW1 to house French and British prisoners. His POW number was 30702.

    Martin Thomas



    Pte. Arthur Aldridge 1st Btn. Welch Regiment

    Arthur Aldridge was held as a POW in Camps 65 and 66 in Italy, and Stalags 8A, 8B, and 13D in Germany and Poland. He escaped twice in Italy and then on four occasions after being transferred to Germany and Poland. In Germany, he worked in coal mines.




    Gnr. William Edward "Max" Maxwell Royal Horse Artillery

    My father, William Maxwell, was born into an Anglo-Indian family in 1909 in Rewaree, North India. His father was an engine driver on the Indian Railways. His early life was spent travelling around with his parents and siblings wherever his father was working, but at the age of eight he and his two sisters were orphaned and they were sent to an orphanage in Orissa, Eastern India, where he stayed until the age of eighteen. Life had been very harsh there and one of his sisters died at the age of fourteen.

    He joined the Royal Horse Artillery in Meerut as a young man, serving seven years on the North Western Frontier before the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, when his regiment was sent back to England. This was the first time he had ever been to the UK.

    My father took part in the British Expeditionary Force to France and was repatriated from Dunkirk. After this, he was sent to North Africa, where he was captured by the Italians at Gazala in 1942. He was initially transported to a camp in Capua, near Naples, then transferred to Campo 53 at Sforzacosta in the Marche region. I knew little of this period of my father's imprisonment until I received his war records and was able to do my own research.

    My father died from injuries and illness in 1950, as a result of being on a Death March in the winter of 1944/5. I was three years old at the time of his death, so was never able to speak to him about his life.

    After the Italian armistice, he became a prisoner in German hands in 1943, arriving by cattle truck at Stalag VIIIB in October 1943 and then being transferred to Stalag 344 (Lamsdorf) in 1944.

    In the bitter winter of 1944/5 the Germans, fearing the advance of the Russians from the East, emptied the camps and forced all the prisoners to march westwards. Conditions on the march were appalling. Men died from dysentery or exhaustion, or were shot by their captors and their bodies flung into ditches. The prisoners had virtually no food and resorted to eating handfuls of snow to quench their thirst or tearing up grass to eat. They would sleep in barns, and sometimes pigsties, but if there was nowhere else, they would have to sleep on the frozen ground. They marched on for four months through one of the bitterest winters in years, across Poland and Germany, until eventually, they fell into the hands of the Allies, approaching from the west.

    My father, gravely ill by this time, was airlifted back to Britain in April 1945 and sent to a hospital in Ashridge, Berkshire, where he was nursed back to health. This was where he met my mother, Joyce, who was a patient in the civilian wing of the hospital. They met at a dance organised by the hospital authorities to celebrate the end of the war and by the end of 1945, they were married.

    They settled down to married life and by 1948 had two children, myself and my brother, David. When my mother was expecting their third child, my father became very ill and was admitted to hospital, where he died from kidney failure, directly attributable to his treatment as a POW and his experiences on the Death March. He died aged 40, in April 1950 and my sister was born two months later, in June. Mum was only twenty-six years old and also profoundly deaf. However, she managed to bring up three children single-handedly, totally against the odds and later in life, was a Founder Member of the War Widows' Association of Great Britain, for which she received the MBE.

    Ruth Maxwell



    Pte. John Porter Murray 9th Btn. Durham Light Infantry

    We knew John Murray went missing in Sicily in 1943. From the Red Cross in Geneva we learned he was captured on 17th of July 1943 and that he arrived in Stalag VIII B, coming from P.G. No 66 Italy via Stalag VII A according to a list dated 11th of November 1943 and a capture card dated 26th of Oct 1943.

    M A Weston



    Pte. William Nelson Ellsmore Ledbury 172nd Field Regiment Royal Artillery

    William Ledbury

    My father, William Ledbury, has written his own story and you can read this on the WW2 Peoples War website. He served in 172nd Field Regiment, Royal Artillery and was held as a PoW in Stalag 4c, Wistritz Bei Teplitz, He celebrated his 100th birthday last July and still has a good memory of wartime. He is now looking forward to his 101th birthday in July this year. Journey into the Unknown

    Cherryl Wharton



    GH Vaughton 5th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment

    GH Vaughton served with the 5th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    LA Riley 4th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment

    LA Riley served with the 4th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    HL Jenkins 44th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment

    HL Jenkins served with the 44th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    Tpr. George Edwin Hill 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps

    George Hill served with the 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps and the Leicester Regiment. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    Patrick F Deasy 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps

    Patrick F Deasy served with the 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    L/Cpl. John Darby Benson 4th Queens Own Hussars

    L/Cpl.John Benson served with the 4th Queens Own Hussars British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    L/Cpl. John Murray Aitken 2nd Sqd Lothian and Border Horse

    L/Cpl.John Aitken served with the 2nd Sqd Lothian and Border Horse British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

    Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

    Dan



    Albert Pearson Leicestershire Regiment

    My late father, Albert Pearson was a prisoner in Stalag IVB, prisoner number 227929. He arrived there via camp 66, Capua, Italy. He was in the Leicestershire Regiment, number 4868471, captured in North Africa early in 1943.

    He spoke very little about his time in the camps, but he did say they woke one morning to find the German guards gone, and lots of Russians on horseback. He and two others then spent some time roaming around the area, spending some time in a railway station. On one occasion a local family with several daughters offered them shelter, my Dad felt this was to try to protect themselves from the Russians. They declined the offer, also fearful of the Russians. They were later rounded up by the Americans and brought back to England. I'm not sure how.

    I would be very interested if any one knew him or could fill in some of the missing information. Thank you.

    Mick Pearson



    Earnest Cooper Leicestershire Regiment

    My late father; Earnest Cooper, 4868237, Leicestershire Regt was captured in North Africa after the Battle of Kasserine (1943) and was first imprisoned in PG66 at Capua, then transferred to Stalag XVIIB following the Italian armistice.

    Ian Cooper



    Drv. Edward Webster Royal Signals

    Edward Webster was captured by the Italians in Mechili, Libya on 8th of April 1941. He was first interned at Capua POW camp (date unknown), then at the Gruppignano POW Camp on 24th of July 1941, and then transferred to C.C.N. 53 P.M. 3300 Camp on 2nd of September 1943. Finally, he was transferred to Stalag VIIB in Germany.

    Kathryn Burford



    Sgt. Alfred "Tom" Thomas Coldstream Guards

    Alfred Thomas, Coldstream Guards

    Two Stalag 344 German guards who were twin brothers

    My father Alfred Thomas served in Palestine before the war. On 13th April 1939 he was back in Egypt, where he stayed until another tour of duty in Palestine starting on 27th of May 1940. With the Second World War now well under way, Tom was posted back to Egypt on 27th of June 1940 to face the Italians and, later, Rommel's Afrika Korps.

    The Italians under Marshal Graziano launched a limited invasion of Egypt in September 1940, going as far as Sidi Barrani about 50 miles across the border from Libya, where they stopped and fortified the area. This gave General Wavell time to reorganise his forces before going on the counter-attack in Operation Compass, which began on the 7th/8th December 1940 and lasted until 7th February 1941. At that point, the Italians having lost, Sidi Barrani, the port of Bardia, Tobruk, and Benghazi surrendered south of Beda Fomm. During Operation Compass, 133,298 Italian soldiers were captured along with a large number of guns and tanks. The British now halted their attack, having to send troops to Greece. On 12th of February, Rommel flew to Tripoli ahead of his troops, who arrived on the 14th. Rommel almost immediately went on the offensive and by 24 March had taken El Agheila, which was the leading British position. He then advanced on Mersa el Brega, which fell on 31st of March. The British were by now in chaotic retreat with Benghazi falling on 4th of April. The only place holding out against Rommel’s forces was Tobruk.

    My father probably fought in both campaigns, but it was during the retreat from Rommel's forces that on 27th of May 1941 he was reported as missing and only later as having been taken prisoner. It is possible that this was while defending the Halfway Pass from the German advance. My father rarely talked about his wartime experience, but he did believe that he remained alive when taken prisoner due to the fact that Rommel showed up around that time, which ensured that prisoners were treated correctly.

    Prisoners of war tend to be written out of history apart from a few sensational cases of escape. These escapes were rarely successful and the reprisals could be life threatening. Many POWs were traumatised by their experiences and treatment, along with feelings of guilt for being captured. The first record of Tom, after he was shipped out of North Africa to Italy, was of being interned in Italian POW camp number 66. This camp was in Capua, a few miles south of Naples. It was situated on a vast plain that offered views of the Vesuvius volcano. When the Allies invaded Sicily on 10 July and Southern Italy on 3rd of September 1943, POWs would have been moved north as the Allies advanced. Apparently, when the Italians stopped their participation in the war, they withdrew their guards from the POW camps. This gave an opportunity for prisoners to escape. However, a secret branch of the Ministry of Defence (known as MI9) ordered that British POWs in Italy should remain in their camps after Italy surrendered. Many senior officers within the camps enforced this. As a result of this, the German army was able to walk into dozens of camps and round up the POWs.

    Eventually, Tom ended up in Poland at Stalag 344 Lamsdorf (formerly Stalag VIIIB) in Silesia. This was a large German POW camp located in the small town of Lamsdorf, now called Lambinowice in Poland, that was initially built during WW1 to house French and British prisoners. His POW number was 30702.

    Martin Thomas



    Pte. Arthur Aldridge 1st Btn. Welch Regiment

    Arthur Aldridge was held as a POW in Camps 65 and 66 in Italy, and Stalags 8A, 8B, and 13D in Germany and Poland. He escaped twice in Italy and then on four occasions after being transferred to Germany and Poland. In Germany, he worked in coal mines.




    Gnr. William Edward "Max" Maxwell Royal Horse Artillery

    My father, William Maxwell, was born into an Anglo-Indian family in 1909 in Rewaree, North India. His father was an engine driver on the Indian Railways. His early life was spent travelling around with his parents and siblings wherever his father was working, but at the age of eight he and his two sisters were orphaned and they were sent to an orphanage in Orissa, Eastern India, where he stayed until the age of eighteen. Life had been very harsh there and one of his sisters died at the age of fourteen.

    He joined the Royal Horse Artillery in Meerut as a young man, serving seven years on the North Western Frontier before the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, when his regiment was sent back to England. This was the first time he had ever been to the UK.

    My father took part in the British Expeditionary Force to France and was repatriated from Dunkirk. After this, he was sent to North Africa, where he was captured by the Italians at Gazala in 1942. He was initially transported to a camp in Capua, near Naples, then transferred to Campo 53 at Sforzacosta in the Marche region. I knew little of this period of my father's imprisonment until I received his war records and was able to do my own research.

    My father died from injuries and illness in 1950, as a result of being on a Death March in the winter of 1944/5. I was three years old at the time of his death, so was never able to speak to him about his life.

    After the Italian armistice, he became a prisoner in German hands in 1943, arriving by cattle truck at Stalag VIIIB in October 1943 and then being transferred to Stalag 344 (Lamsdorf) in 1944.

    In the bitter winter of 1944/5 the Germans, fearing the advance of the Russians from the East, emptied the camps and forced all the prisoners to march westwards. Conditions on the march were appalling. Men died from dysentery or exhaustion, or were shot by their captors and their bodies flung into ditches. The prisoners had virtually no food and resorted to eating handfuls of snow to quench their thirst or tearing up grass to eat. They would sleep in barns, and sometimes pigsties, but if there was nowhere else, they would have to sleep on the frozen ground. They marched on for four months through one of the bitterest winters in years, across Poland and Germany, until eventually, they fell into the hands of the Allies, approaching from the west.

    My father, gravely ill by this time, was airlifted back to Britain in April 1945 and sent to a hospital in Ashridge, Berkshire, where he was nursed back to health. This was where he met my mother, Joyce, who was a patient in the civilian wing of the hospital. They met at a dance organised by the hospital authorities to celebrate the end of the war and by the end of 1945, they were married.

    They settled down to married life and by 1948 had two children, myself and my brother, David. When my mother was expecting their third child, my father became very ill and was admitted to hospital, where he died from kidney failure, directly attributable to his treatment as a POW and his experiences on the Death March. He died aged 40, in April 1950 and my sister was born two months later, in June. Mum was only twenty-six years old and also profoundly deaf. However, she managed to bring up three children single-handedly, totally against the odds and later in life, was a Founder Member of the War Widows' Association of Great Britain, for which she received the MBE.

    Ruth Maxwell



    Pte. John Porter Murray 9th Btn. Durham Light Infantry

    We knew John Murray went missing in Sicily in 1943. From the Red Cross in Geneva we learned he was captured on 17th of July 1943 and that he arrived in Stalag VIII B, coming from P.G. No 66 Italy via Stalag VII A according to a list dated 11th of November 1943 and a capture card dated 26th of Oct 1943.

    M A Weston



    Pte. William Nelson Ellsmore Ledbury 172nd Field Regiment Royal Artillery

    William Ledbury

    My father, William Ledbury, has written his own story and you can read this on the WW2 Peoples War website. He served in 172nd Field Regiment, Royal Artillery and was held as a PoW in Stalag 4c, Wistritz Bei Teplitz, He celebrated his 100th birthday last July and still has a good memory of wartime. He is now looking forward to his 101th birthday in July this year. Journey into the Unknown

    Cherryl Wharton







    Recomended Reading.

    Available at discounted prices.







    Links


















      The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items.

      The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.

      If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.



      Hosted by:

      The Wartime Memories Project Website

      is archived for preservation by the British Library





      Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
      - All Rights Reserved

      We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.