大象传媒

Missing Relatives

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I did feel sad when something happened to someone closer, however e.g. the postman鈥檚 son who was in the Air Force was 鈥渕issing presumed killed鈥�. I felt very sorry for a girl called Rosie who had been engaged to him.
During the War, my Uncle Charlie, my Mum鈥檚 young brother, who had volunteered for the Army, went missing. He was a Dispatch Rider and was taken prisoner by the Italians at Tobruk in North Africa. He was a Prisoner-of-War in Italy and then, when the Italians capitulated, the prisoners were sent to Germany. At his funeral in 2002 I learned that he had twice escaped whilst a prisoner in Italy. Also at one time he was having to chew leather because of a lack of food! In Germany he was imprisoned in Stalag 78 at Leipzig.
When he was missing, the family didn鈥檛 know what had happened to him, whether he was alive or dead. It must have been awful for them although, as children, we didn鈥檛 understand at the time. My Mum used to go to Prisoner-of-War meetings at the Electric House in Croydon, in the hope of finding information from relatives of other Prisoners of War.
She also went to Spiritualist meetings and from that she learned that he had hurt his back but was alive. In fact, I think he had fallen from a roof in the camp and that was how he had hurt his back

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