Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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249133
Pte. Charles Russell Gibson
British Army Highland Light Infantry
My father was Charles Gibson and he was a Private in The Highland Light Infantry, British Army. He was captured in Lybia and sent to Campo 78, Fonte d'Amore, near Sulmona.
After the Italians capitulated, he left the camp with another soldier. They were helped by an Italian family (a single mother, two sons and a daughter) and looked after by them for three months. I only found out about this after my father died in 1988 when we found a letter from the Italian family written in August 1946 and addressed to my mother. They did not know what had happened to him and wondered if he had got home safely.
I know that he was recaptured by the Germans and sent to a camp at Moosburg, near Munich. With the great help of the Tourist Office in Sulmona I managed to get in touch with the family, who had emigrated to Canada in 1946. Unfortunately, the son who had written the letter had passed away, but I was able to speak to the daughter by telephone,