This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.
If you enjoy this siteplease 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
258018Pte. Frederick Thomas Elsbury
British Army Kings Royal Rifles Corps
from:Ashford Kent
Frederick Elsbury was my father. He served with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps in WW2 and was in Greece when they had to evacuate and went from Pyreas to Suda Bay, Crete. They landed on Crete with no real equipment. They had to sleep out in the olive groves at some point and we don't really know when my father was shot and wounded. His regiment were told that they had to move and so his fellow soldiers put my father onto an old door and carried him up a mountain and into a forest where they were hiding out. But because my father was by that time becoming ill from his gunshot wounds, his commanding officer told him he would have to go into the nearby village and surrender if he was to have a chance of survival. This he did and surrendered to the Germans and was hospitalized in Greece.When he was well enough he was sent by truck to a prisoner of war camp, Stalag 12a in Poland. He worked on a nearby farm while he was a prisoner. Fortunately for him it was a fruit farm so he was able to eat some of the fruit and the German guards also asked them to smuggle back fruit as they were hungry. He was liberated and brought back and hospitalised here.
My father never really told us much until he was ill. All he used to say was that he was lucky.
Related Content:
Can you help us to add to our records?
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.
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:
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.