The National Ex-Prisoner of War Association
Spring 2008 Newsletter
Above 1942 ‘Luft Orpheans’ Stalag Luft 1 and Below The New Theatre, Stalag Luft 3.
SPRING 2008 NEWSLETTER
ASSOCIATION NEWS by Les Allan, President.
Contact details; 99 Parlaunt Road, Langley, Berkshire SL3 8BE.
Tel/Fax 01753-818308.
Greetings to all members and welcome to our first newsletter of the year. Please continue to send in photographs and stories and items of interest. We have two items to start the ball rolling this issue;
“Cruising down the River – Mersey” by 22781 Frank J Gill, Stalag 8B.
“Upon receiving a request from our President Les Allan to attend, if possible, an invitation from the ‘Not Forgotten Association’ for an arranged cruise on the River Mersey, my Army pal Frank McGauley and I decided we would accept. The trip was arranged for Monday 10th December, the depths of winter; certainly no sunbathing on this venture.
“As time moved on we eventually got final details from the association giving the time to be at the pier head, rigged out to board the ‘Royal Daffodil’ around 12.15pm. This ferry has operated on the Mersey for many years, carrying passengers from one side of the river to the other and carrying out social events up and down the river.
“Unfortunately my Army mate took ill and was unable to attend the event, so I travelled down alone to the pier and met some of the 180 other guests, all from around the north-west. The ferry docked and everyone went on board, most making for the comfort of the indoor accommodation for the weather was sunny, dry and slightly windy, but cold, very cold.
“It was not too long before I found myself in conversation with Vets from the Army and Navy and we exchanged some sad tales and some comical. And as we sailed away on the Rocking Rolling River – Right Out To Sea, we enjoyed the Welcome drink provided, then came the buffet, a marvellous array of everything that you wished to see, musical entertainment was played throughout the trip and all in all it was very enjoyable. I spoke to the events organiser, Rosie Thompson who informed me of the many events that this association carry out each year and without doubt it is marvellous just what they do for disabled personnel, a credit to everyone involved. I walked around the deck a few times as it brought back many memories for me of my youth. Thank You Les for offering me the chance to relive the past. The trip arrived back at the quay at 15.00 hours, we said our farewells and wandered home with thanks and memories.”
One of our new members is George Kent, formerly with 367 Battery, 140th Field Regiment, RA Territorial, Woolwich, London who is currently living in South Africa. He tells us “I was wounded and captured by the ‘Deaths Head Hussars’ at ‘Watho’, Mount Cassel, Dunkirk on 30th May 1940. I took part in the march via cattle truck and barge to Emmerich in Germany and thence to Stalag 20A in Thorn. Escaped twice, but that’s another story. One thing that I and many others object to is that since 1975 we have received a ‘Frozen Pension’ from the UK. This is our reward, which we are fighting through Luxembourg.” Note from Les – can George or any other overseas members send me some details of the ‘Frozen Pension’ and latest attempts to improve the situation.
OBITUARIES. We regret to report the passing away of the following; Mr J A Procter from Woodhouse, Sheffield passed away in December. Mr Bill Manley who passed away in June last year at 90 years. Bill served with 152 Battery HAA RA in Norway, then went to Egypt in 1941 before transferring to the 2 HRA for the Greek campaign. He was taken prisoner on Crete, then spent the next four years in Stalag 18A in Austria. His family will continue membership of the association. Mr Herbert William Moore who passed away on 6th January 2008 aged 92 years. We Will Remember Them.
REUNION UPDATE Places are still available for the annual reunion at Lakeside, Hayling Island October 3rd to October 6th 2008. The costs are £160.00 for a single person and £290.00 for a couple, bookings will be taken up till the end of May. If anyone requires a booking form please phone Mrs Freda Moores on 01628 473832. Unfortunately this might be the last reunion due to falling numbers and increased prices so phone for your booking form now.
Membership Renewal. It is also that time of year when we remind members that their annual subscription due was due on 1st January. The cost is £5 for former prisoners of war and £10 for family and friends and for former POWs living overseas. We have managed to keep the subscription to this amount for eight years now. Please make cheques out to NEXPOWA and send to Les Allan, 99 Parlaunt Road, Langley, Berkshire SL3 8BE. For enquiries please ring or fax Les on 01753-818308. Members will receive four quarterly newsletters each year. If anyone would like any back issues of the newsletter please contact Phil Chinnery who still has stocks of most of them.
HISTORIANS NEWS by Phil Chinnery.
Contact details: 59 Pinkwell Lane, Hayes, Middlesex UB3 1PJ
Email NEXPOWA@fsmail.net
CAMPO PG78 SULMONA, ITALY.
Graham Johnson wrote in to say “Dear Phil, Firstly let me wish you a happy and productive New Year. I have belatedly discovered my mislaid copy of the Spring 2007 newsletter. I was fascinated to read the letter from Bill Hayes about the photographs of Campo PG 78 at Sulmona and note your request for any other photos of PG78. My father was an inmate there and I have a series of 11 black & white photos including the two supplied by Bill which you have published. They are viewable on my website at http://fp.gcjonline.plus.com/ From the home page click on > Italy > Campo PG78 > Campo PG78 photos. As credited on the website, they were supplied to me by Graham Howard whose father was also a POW there but I do not know the original source. Graham is also a member of NEXPOWA.
“Since the pictures clearly show a deserted camp with weeds in abundance and the buildings looking rather abandoned I was intrigued to read Bill's statement that the pictures "were taken in the camp with the help of a bribed guard for the film and developing." He does not actually say that the pictures were taken while he was a POW there though that is the clear implication. Perhaps it would be worthwhile clarifying with him exactly when the photos were taken?
“Anyway, perhaps you would care to mention my website in your next newsletter as it may be of interest to other members? Coincidentally my father was also captured at Fort Mechili like Bill and his comrades. I would therefore very much like to contact Bill and Co to hear first hand what happened on 8 April 1941 and their subsequent transfer to Italy and later Germany. Provided Bill and his friends agree, could you please supply a telephone number or address or email contact for him or them? I feel it is most important to record these events properly before the few existing participants leave us for ever. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. In the meantime I will contact Graham Howard to see if he knows the original source of the photographs in question.” Note from Phil Chinnery – if Graham and Bill would like to confirm their addresses to me I will put them in touch with each other.
Graham Johnson sent in another letter regarding PG78: “Hi Phil, Hope you are keeping well and best wishes for the New Year. Just received my Winter newsletter and saw the drawing of Campo PG 78 on the back page. I will send the following as a letter to Norman Raddon as requested.
‘Dear Norman, I have just seen the drawing you sent in to NEXPOWA. My father was also in Campo PG 78 (Sulmona). I visited the camp and the surrounding area in 2003 and have a website with full description and photographs of the camp at http://fp.gcjonline.plus.com/ . If you look at the map on the Photos page of the website you will see that the drawing is almost certainly of PG 78.
The view and the angles have perhaps been distorted slightly in order to include all the main features in what is a panoramic view of the camp and its surrounds. I presume that your father must have done the drawing during his brief period of freedom after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943. I would estimate that the view is from a high position at the southeast end of Monte Morrone possibly in the area of the villages of Marane, Pacentro or even Campo di Giove.
The camp is in the foreground with two rows of barrack huts in a roughly oblong compound. It is situated at the base of a mountain (Monte Morrone) to the right, and the building half way up the slope is the distinctive hermitage of Saint Onofrio which overlooks the camp.
The two large complexes of buildings at the far end of the camp represent the village of Badia dominated by the Morronese Abbey and possibly the adjacent state penitentiary.
The flat land beyond the camp and to the left are geographically accurate as the flat valley floor with scattered hamlets and farm buildings and the high mountains in the distance.
The buildings to the extreme left of the picture are Sulmona itself and the key identifier here is the representation of its famous Roman aqueduct and its many arches.
In my opinion this is most definitely a drawing of PG78. If you go there yourself sometime and drive out to some of the hamlets mentioned, you will probably be able to take a photograph (with a wide-angle lens) and get very much the same view. With best regards, Graham Johnson.’
LIFE IN THE WELSH GUARDS.
Sydney Pritchard from Aberdare in Wales took part in the largely forgotten evacuation and battle for Bolougne in May 1940, where so many Welsh soldiers were injured or lost their lives. During the evacuation and attack from the Germans many Welsh Guards were left to fend for themselves because of the lack of space on the evacuating ships and many fought heroically against the odds, and only when down to the last 13 fit Welsh Guards did they surrender. Sydney only wrote about his experiences in the last years of his life (he passed away in 2003) and his book ‘Life in the Welsh Guards 1939-46’ was published in 2006. The book has apparently sold out but a reprint is being considered. If any members were evacuated from Bolougne or taken prisoner there, Sydneys daughter would like to hear from you. Write to Mrs Sian Ward, Ty Gwyn, Llanbedr, Gwynedd LL45 2HL.
The Mikado’ Feb 1944
STALAG 383
‘Up the Pole’ May 1944
‘Distinguished Gathering’
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? By Phil Chinnery.
If anyone can assist with answers to the requests below, please contact the requester direct or write to Phil Chinnery at 59 Pinkwell Lane, Hayes, Middlesex UB3 1PJ.
Jonathan Ives, 9 Chestnut Grove, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 3LN wrote in to say “I'm trying to trace the following Royal Air Force bomber crew men (or their families);
Sgt EAF Jones and Sgt T Maxwell (nothing noted under nationality so presume UK). 75 Squadron, aircraft serial BK646 & type Stirling. Date 14/6/1943, target minelaying. Camps Stalag Luft 6 & Stalag 357.My wife's Grandfather was the pilot of BK646 who was killed when it came down. However the remainder of the crew were either captured or evaded capture. Next year in the French town of Moulin, where BK646 crashed there is to be a commemoration and I'm trying to trace the crew. I am in contact with 3 other families, and think I'm close to tracing one RCAF member of the crew. That just leaves Jones and Maxwell. I have written to the RAF records office and, while I'm not next of kin, they have agreed to forward letters on to their last known addresses. I wonder if you can suggest any other routes that I might be able to get in contact? A French website regarding BK646 and it's crew has been set up at http://www.absa39-5.asso.fr/15%20juin%2043/15__juin_43.html
If you can assist Jonathan please contact him at his mailing address or by email at: jonathan.ives@gmail.com
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Major (Retd) Chester W Potts TD wrote in to ask; “I have just come across your summer 2005 newsletter on the website. I see that there is a picture of Lt Tommy Elliott, Northumberland Fusiliers in Colditz 1941. I would like to know who provided the photo as I would like to get a copy. I am researching his Battalion which is the same one that my grandfather served in namely the 7th Battalion who were captured at St Valery in 1940. I am in the middle of writing their story. Tommy was a friend of the family and I am trying to track his family down at present. I would also be interested in tracking down veterans of this Battalion and their families to help in this research.” Editor – the picture came from a WW2 Red Cross newsletter rather than one of our members. If anyone can help Chester please write to him care of Phil Chinnery.----------------------------------
“I am looking for any information on a WW2 POW called Andy Milburn – my elderly Uncle read a book by him but lost it in a move and I am trying to find another but cannot find any information on the web? All I know is that his claim to fame was that when captured he had lost both his hands and the Germans gave him replacements, his story was about this and his subsequent recovery after the war, can you help? Regards Darrell
Storey, Tel: 01895-625117, Mobilephone, 07770-358040.
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“I would like to place a notice in your newsletter asking whether anyone (or their relatives) escaped from Campo 49 Fontenallato in Italy with Lt. Frank Adams, 3rd Royal Tank regiment, Personal Number 71620. Frank Adams, my father, left the main group with two others and for a year hid out in the hills, finally crossing American lines in the Florence area in late 1944. He wrote one brief memoir which is now lost and he died 39 years ago. I have tried asking through the San Martino Association without any success. Regards, Andrew Adams, 57, Hatch Way, Kirtlington, Oxon OX5 3JS.”
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Lynda Naylor asks; “I'm writing from the Local Studies Library in Nottingham, hoping you can help. We have been given a badge which has "Notts Prisoners of War Relatives Association" written on it around a picture of Robin Hood and which we are going to keep in our archive. However, we have no information about the association, not even if it was formed during the First or Second World War, and wondered if you know anything about it? Thank you,Lynda Naylor Team Librarian Social Inclusion, Central Library 915 2874”
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“My name is Pte Dennis Henry Minter (Nickname Mar Minter) of the 2/7th Battalion, The Queens Royal Regiment. Army No 6093969. I was in Stalag XXA and Stalag XXB and I am eager to make contact with any survivors who knew me or who can tell me anything about the following four men who served in my unit: Major J.W. Carr -made it home after Dunkirk with battalion or was captured, injured or killed about 20.5.1940 near Abbeville, N.France? 2nd/Lieutenant J.A.B. Mumford and Sergeant Hawkes - captured, injured or killed about 20.5.1940 near Abbeville, N.France. Private Fred Hammond injured (blinded) about 20.5.1940 near Abbeville, N.France. I would also like to hear from these listed below, all POWs with me at Stalag XXB 1940-1945:
Private Micky Fipps, Phips, Phipps - was a painter from Albury between Dorking and Guildford in Surrey; Bert Stupples or Percy Stupples - from Ramsgate; Jonny Dunbar from The Midlands; Jimmy Farrington from Glasgow - 51st Highland Division; Sammy Newton - a proofreader from The Reynolds News; POW called 'Tansi' from Liverpool - he kept on escaping; Sergeant called Charlie McDowell who was the senior NCO in charge of Stalag XXB. Details needed for a book being written. Please contact my son-in-law as my hearing is not too good. Patrick Gibbon, Tel: 01483 770819 or e-mail: pat@patgibbon.f2s.com
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John Pateman wrote in to ask; “I have just joined NEXPOWA. I understand that you can provide a history or report on POW camps in Germany. My father, Arthur Frederick Pateman, was POW 141278 at Stalag 11A, Altengrabow, Brandenburg. Can you send me any information about this camp? Also, can you include a request for information in your newsletter? My father was Private 6344167 in the 2nd Battalion of the West Kent Regiment. He enlisted in 1937 and served in Palestine (1938-39), Malta (1939-43) and Samos/Leros where he was taken prisoner in November 1943. I would like to hear from anyone who knew my father, served in the West Kents or spent time at Stalag 11A. I can be contacted at 11 Windsor Close, Sleaford, Lincs, NG34 7NL. Tel 01529-309420, johnpateman9@hotmail.com.”
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Alf Keats, 5 The Close, Boxgrove, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 OEG asks “Could you help me find a Colonel from the Durham Light Infantry whom I was batman to in Oflag 8F in Czechoslovakia and then in Brunswick, Germany. I cannot remember his name, but have a photo taken in Brunswick showing the Colonel in the front row, third from the right in a peaked cap.”
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Mrs. Janet Thompson, 6100, Clover Ridge Crescent, Mississauga, Ontario, L5N7B3,
Canada. Email croff@rogers.com writes in to ask; “My father Andrew Jeffrey Evinou, service number 7889267 was a WW2 Veteran with the British Eighth Army, Desert Rats. Sadly he died last year, aged 86. Like so many veterans, he did not talk of his years nor did he keep any memorabilia he might have had at one time. He was a tank driver with The Fourth Royal Tank Regiment. He was rescued off the beaches of Dunkirk. Is there any record of which soldiers were rescued regarding which ship they were rescued by etc? Dad served in North Africa and was captured at Tobruk. He was a Prisoner of War, first in Italy, then Germany, Stalag 8B being the longest. I think also in Stalag 8A and 8C as transit camps. He worked in the coal mines and survived the Death March during his Germany internment. I have no information of where he was in Italy. Would you happen to know to which camp the majority of British POWs were taken to in Italy, after Tobruk? Dad also attended a hospital in Italy. Would you know which hospital these prisoners would be sent to? When his tank was hit in Tobruk, he was hit by shrapnel, which almost severed the middle finger on his right hand. After the war, the finger had to be removed. Thank you, I would appreciate any guidance in my passionate search for information. A very proud serviceman's daughter. Lest We Forget”
The Japanese Army’s barbaric treatment of its victims have been recorded in a number of fine but inevitably grim accounts but, strangely, their war crimes at sea have been largely overlooked. As this book reveals, tragically this cannot have been through lack of material. The author, Mark Felton who is establishing himself as a leading authority on maritime issues with a Far Eastern basis, has unearthed a plethora of outrages against both servicemen and civilians which make chilling and shocking reading. Ironically, while the Japanese Navy followed many of the Royal Navy’s traditions and structures, it had a totally different approach to the treatment of its foes. There appears to have been a widespread lack of chivalry or respect for those at their mercy, even when their defeated adversaries had shown outstanding courage and resolve.
Hardcover, 214 pages. Available from Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorks S70 2AS. Tel 01226-734555. Price £19.99.
This diagram has recently found its way to us and appears to show a POW camp on Formosa/Taiwan. Lt/Gen Jonathan Wainwright was the commander of the US Army in the Philippines and he was reportedly held at a number of camps on Formosa. Many also held British and Commonwealth prisoners of war. Would any of our readers have any information on this camp? Thanks to Kevin Heyes for the Stalag 8B card below.
Copyright 2008. The National Ex-Prisoner of War Association.
