The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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257245 Pte. Richard Ward British Army Royal West Kent Regiment from:Croydon My Dad, Richard Ward served with the Royal West Kent Regiment in WW2. He was captured and spent 5 years in Stalag XXa. He was caught on the Albert Bridge in France. He was a bag of bones when he came home. When I was a little girl he would shout out at night in Polish or German and he didn't sleep much. He also used to sleep on the floor. It took him years to live with what had happened to him. I used to think it was normal as I had got used to it. He didn't tell me or my 2 brothers much about Stalag XXa except how he and a group of other prisoners had to go and collect bodies of people (mainly Jews) and put them on carts. This had a terrible effect on him. He could never be on his own so when we were older and learnt to drive one of us would take him to work then one of us would bring him home. Dad was put to work in a sugar factory then on to a farm. He was made to work very hard with little food. In the sugar factory the men were searched every night. One night my Dad had a length of sugar beet down the inside of his trousers. When the German guard searched him he said "my, you Englishmen" as he felt the inside of his leg.They must have been desperate for food. Another time their meal was crab apples and they scrounged some ducks' feet. It was stewed up and the meat was picked from the little bones in the feet. I don't know how they ever survived. I have some photos and his small case with Stalag XXa stamped on it, letters he had sent home and 3 pencil drawings of a German guard. I will keep these for the rest of my life. Dad died in 1992 and he was the best Dad in the world. I miss him so much and am sorry that I never found out much about those 5 years. Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal West Kent Regiment (Queens own) Battle of France and The Low Countries 1940 Stalag 20A (312) 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.