Can anyone with access to casualty or POW records see anything for this chap ? He apparently left his helmet behind in Norway....A very nice 1938 dated Joseph Sankey.
Nothing on casualty lists with that name or number. ? does the number end with a 1, the image looks different.
No Tony, I think it's an '8'...I can't believe that I've mistyped on an unalterable thread title.... It could just possibly be a '6' but I don't think so.
This will rule out some names & nearby numbers from Rob's thread. http://www.ww2talk.com/index.php?attachments/upload_2020-1-4_19-0-8-jpeg.257840/
Could be 4802693. Was hoping Rob had posted that page. His thread is huge.takes ages to go through as searching for nearby numbers doesnt help.
The only one close is a Kiwi POW UK, British Prisoners of War, 1939-1945 Name: C S Wrack Rank: L/Cpl Army Number: 22590 POW Number: 32362 Camp Type: Stalag Camp Number: 8B Camp Location: Teschen, Czech Republic Section: 2nd New Zealand Expy Force: Officers and Other Ranks Cant find one on CWGC records so perhaps he made it back and survived TD
Stuart Wrack, enlisted into the Lincolns 14 December 1938. Transferred to the A.A.C. (D.S.A.F) 3 January 1943. Rejoined the Lincolns 10 October. Demobbed to the Z (T) Reserve on 19/7/1946. If his helmet was found in Normay, he would have been in 4th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment.
Thanks Rob, wonderful stuff. It was apparently found near Steinkjer. 4th Battalion indeed seems certain.
4 Lincoln's were in Steinkjer and was heavily bombed. "The war diary for 21st April states that Steinkjer had become anything but a health resort". Easy to lose some kit.
I assume that this notice refers to the erstwhile custodian of the helmet. He would appear to have died in Grimsby in 2009. Click here to view the tribute page for Stuart WRACK
A question on the helmet colour. In that photo it looks a very brown khaki. Weren't they more greenish ? I should know but I don't. Edit. Maybe just lighting/flash/rust as underside of this one looks the same. United Kingdom MkII Even though close up it greenish.
Actually Owen, this is where the FB group's interest arose. There seem to be a lot of satin-finished early helmets (1938 / '39 dated)...BEF (and Norway) helmets always look dull though. The suspicion is that they were brown for a while and used as such by Home Guard etc. but that troops on active service must have re-painted. This helmet seems to show that which was why I was keen to pin down that it did actually belong to someone who could have been there in 1940 and that it didn't simply arrive with post-war equipment for the Norwegian Army...That now seems unlikely as he was a 1938 recruit to a regiment that served there in 1940. It looks to have been repainted in matt Khaki Green No.3 although that is a problematical colour at the best of times as the green chromate compounds were unstable.
