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Hello
I'm trying to find anyone who has contact with any member of the 4th Dorsets who fought at Arnhem, C Company in particular.

 

Welcome to the forums Dorset. I'm sure one of the boys can help you out with contacts. Look forward to seeing you around the forums.
Kitty

 

Welcome Dorsetsson.

Good luck with your quest.

 

Welcome to the Forum!

 

Welcome to the boards, and thank you for your family's service and sacrifice for Crown and Country.

 

Thanks to all who replied. I have tried the Keep but no real info.
My dad was transferred to 4th Dorsets when the 59th Div was broken up not lomg after crossing the Orne. My dad transferred to the Dorsets on 30/8 and was posted MIA on 26/9. His body was never found and it was presumed he died as a pow on 25/10/44, but does anyone really know......?
He was Pte 5049075 W.E.P. Simpson 'C' Coy 4th Dorsets, formally of 6th North Staffs.

 

Dorsetsson
I take you've contacted the Regimental Museum here.
http://www.keepmilitarymuseum.org/

Try an email to here devonanddorsetregiment@yahoo.co.uk

Good to meet another Forum member interested in a unit of 43rd Wessex Div.
If the 43rd Wessex Divisional history if you need me to look up anything.
Thanks Owen D
The Keep did send me an extract from a book which gave details of the crossing but had no details of my father's demise.This is not so surprising as he had been with the Dorsets just over 3 weeks and would hardly have known many others in the Company and I should think the records given the circumstances on that day were best forgotten. I imagine that communications between the Germans and British with regards to pows were not that speedy and in the confusions of battle, retreat, consolidate and advance many records never get properly processed until a later date. It was never confirmed that my father was actually a pow or that he died as a pow.

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Hi Dorsetsson

Sorry I missed this posting when it first appeared but luckily one of my Dutch friends drew it to my attention. (Thanks Squire!!)

I think that you will find the attached letter from Pte Peach from the Dorsets of interest.
He sent it in October 1945 in response to enquiries made about "missing" soldiers as the POWs were returning from captivity. In it he states :-
“Pte W.E. Simpson (…) were taken prisoner with me on the 25-09-1944 in Arnhem woods, from there were taken under escort to STALAG XIIA. Was there a month together, finally were sent by rail to STALAG IVB. And there it was that I last saw Simpson and Taylor. I shook hands with them just before I went out on a working Kommando. Both of them were alive up to that day.”

My Dutch friend added this information about Stalag IVB
"When the Soviet Army arrived at the camp in April 1945, there were about 30 000 crowded into the facilities, of these 7,250 were British. About 3,000 died, mainly from tuberculosis and typhus. They were buried in the cemetery in neighboring Neuburxdorf, Bad Liebenwerda, 8km NE of Mühlberg. Today a memorial and a museum commemorate them."

This would be a good place to start further enquiries and I'm certain that there will be other members of this forum that can provide advice on that.


John

 

Owen

Thanks - I've tried to send an email to tell him to look at the site

John

 

Postwar there was concern that some British POWs had been held on to by the Russians for various reasons, the journalist Nigel Cawthorne covered this topic in his book The Iron Cage, also some returning German POWs in the 1950s mentioned that British, American and Poles were in some of the Gulag camps. I think Solzhenitsin also mentions prisoners in British uniform in his Gulag series.