258018 Pte. 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.
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