208332 Bdr. John Stewart Wibberley British Army Royal Artillery from:6 Graysfield, Nottingham My dad, Jack Wibberley, talked about being in the Eighth Army, and about visiting Cairo. He was captured at Tobruk in June 1942 and was taken to Italy where he was a POW in the following camps:
- 85 Turturano near Brindisi
- 87 Stalia
- 66 Capua
- 68 Vetralia
- 73 Fossoli of Carpi
- 53 Sforzacosta
I know he escaped from one of the camps with a friend Mac. He was taken in by a farming family & lived with them. One day when working in the fields he was challenged & beaten with rifles by some Axis troops - he agreed to meet them in the market in Naples the next day & bring another POW with him. Needless to say, he didn't do that! [I read a report he wrote about this when I was about 13, but that report wasn't in family papers when we cleared the family house]
In June 1944 his war record states he was known to have reached Southern Italy & was in Allied hands. By August 1944 he had returned to England & was in Liverpool Transit Camp
He was posted to Clacton on Sea in Essex where he was part of the Heavy Ack Ack Battery. In the NAAFI there he met my mum Ada Letch who was in the ATS. They got married in December 1945. He died in 1958 and my mum died in 1980.
I would love to know if anyone remembers him - he was always known as Jack.
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