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Pte. Frank Martin
British Army 13th (Wandsworth) Btn. East Surrey Regiment
from:15 Highfield Road, Chertsey, Surrey
Frank Martin, East Surrey Regiment was a PoW during WW1 He was captured on 8th of May 1917 at Fresnoy, France while they were defending Fresnoy against a massive German counterattack. Frank was one of 420 missing.
Bob Nunn sent me a photo which shows him with two other soldiers with Kr. Gifhorn written the back. In the photo, he is the man on the right as viewed wearing 13th East Surrey’s Wandsworth Battalion cap badge. Kr. is the German abbr. for Kreiss, a Government area. Regardless, Gifhorn is fixed and is on Luneburger Heath. During the Great War the prisoners in Hannover area were administered by X Army Corps and it's area contained some huge Mannschaftslager such as Soltau on Luneburger Heath which, to get a scale of the challenge here, held 35,000 men but had some 50,000 registered from there and assigned to other Work Camps in the area.
After capture Frank was recorded at the following camps: 23rd of June 1917 at Dulmen, 11th Aug 1917 at Limburg and 24th of November 1917 at Hameln. Hameln was a parent camp in X Corps administrative zone and had many attached work camps. Kr. Gifhorn may have been home to one of the attached work camps. There was a PoW camp in Kreis Gifhorn in WW1, 1.7 km down the "Lagerweg" in Rádersloh on the south side ( coordinates 52.715673 10.382309 ) The postcard photographs were taken by a local photographer 'Frau Anna Niewerth, Gamsen kastoft, Kr Gifhorn'. The camp was divided by a barbed wire fence. The figures on the right of the fence are possibly Russian prisoners with British on the left. Spaced out above the barbed-wire mesh are several strands of wire, which appear to be electrified!
