The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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225660 Norman Key British Army Border Regiment from:Lancashire Norman Key was held at Stalag 383, Hofenfels, his prisoner number was 12695. He was married to my mother on 23rd December 1939, and was in the first wave of the BEF to land in France. He was captured in Tournai on 22nd May 1940. He was shot, but recovered and was held prisoner in Thorn, before being transferred to Stalag 383. I have a beautiful drawing of my mother drawn and signed by (M. Bogaert, Thorne 1e. 11.3.42.) I have tried to find M. Bogaert on the prisoner records with no luck. My dad must have traded something for this portrait to be done from a picture of my mom. The one and only story he ever told, one day I came home (when I was about age 10, in 1956 ) to my dad frying me potato skins. I was horrified, and screamed I wasn't going to eat them. He then told me it was all he had to eat in the camp for years. Then he said, "they went well with the cat I skinned and ate!" So it was funny when I read somewhere on a site about Stalag 383, that someone in the camp lost their pet cat, and suddenly I thought "I wonder???". It must have been true. Apart from that day he never spoke of the war, ever, so it was really interesting to read other stories and I have been able to read and fill in the gaps of what happened to him. So thank you to those who recorded their memoirs, and photos. I only have one faded photo taken in the camp with a message on the back to my mom. I visited Hofenfels last year. The camp is now a military base, and no one is allowed anywhere near it, but it was nice to be in the actual area and visit the little village of Hofenfels and the church, where I know he visited, how I don't know. Janet Key Add to this record.  Related Content: Border Regiment Stalag 383 Prisoner of War Camp Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

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.