The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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237442 Tpr. Albert William Roe British Army Royal Armoured Corps from:Birmingham My father Albert Roe was taken prisoner in Libya, Fort Mechelli on 8 April 1941 and was incarcerated in Sulmona, Italy from May 1941 until September 1943 when he was rounded up by the Germans and sent in a cattle truck to Germany. He was in Stalag IVc until the liberation of the camp by the Ukrainians. He was handed over to the Americans and his document of liberation by them is dated 20 May 1945. I have all the letters he sent from Sulmona and Stalag IVc, which he occasionally called IVB, which may have been the parent camp. All the letters are addressed to IVc and there is a disciplinary document marked IVc. He worked in coal mines in Bohemia. Presumably these were open cast, though he did not say that they were. All the mines around Wistritz seem to be open cast. He returned to England in the summer of 1945. On his return home his mother, who was not expecting him, did not recognise the person she had last seen in 1940. He had lost a great deal of hair and his teeth, soon to be extracted, were in terrible shape. He seldom talked about his experiences. There seemed to be a large number of nationalities and the Russians did not relish being freed by the Ukranian division. My father told me that the Russians shelled the camp before entering, killing several inmates, including one man, who the day before had been expressing his excitement at his forthcoming freedom. The Germans did not treat the Italians or the Slavs very well at all apparently. Conditions were bad for him too. It seems akin to slave labour there. Stephen Roe Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal Armoured Corps Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 78 Prisoner of War Camp Stalag 4C 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.