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503612Herbert 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.
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