The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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501612 Herbert Hewick Merchant Navy My father, Herbert Hewick was a POW at Milag X1B Nord (I believe that's the only camp he was in but could be wrong). As seems to be the norm, he never spoke of his experience as a POW, however, he was just about to start in 1983 with a local newspaper when, God bless him, he died aged 72 with all the memories and names to faces in photos from the camp, and in particular all the Xmas pantos. My dad was in the Merchant Navy and his ship, the Port Wellington, was sunk by a German raider (the Pinguin), in the Indian Ocean, in the early stages of WW2 in November. I believe most of the crew survived the attack, were taken prisoner, transported to land and frog-marched to X1B. I'm not sure if they stopped off at other camps en route. My dad was in this camp until liberated so must have crossed the paths of many a POW mentioned in the various web pages of your superb site. The funny thing is my older brother worked at the same place as one of Dad's Camp buddies which came to light when it came to his retirement, and they thought of doing a This Is Your Life sort of presentation with information from his wife filtered through his exploits from early childhood, school days, and then jobs which put him on the same ship as my dad and the POW camp. My father filled in the lost years using his diary that he kept through those years which finally led them to an emotional reunion. I would be interested to know if a comprehensive list of all prisoners existed or were destroyed. It would be nice in these days of increased family history to add more pieces of the jigsaw to give a fuller picture of his life. Dave Hewick Add to this record.  Related Content: Milag XIb Prisoner of War Camp SS Port Wellington 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.