Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp

12th May 1940 12 Squadron Battle lost

22nd Jul 1941 Parcels

If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.

Those known to have been held in or employed at
Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp
during the Second World War 1939-1945.

Bainbridge Sam.
Bench William. L/Cpl.
Boden Edward Stanley . Pte.
Compton Henry Thomas.
Delavier Maurice.
Favreaux . Lucien Xavier.
Harding John. Pte.
Hynes Wallace F R. A/Cpl.
Suggit MM. Henry Vies. L/Sgt.

The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

Records from Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp other sources.

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Want to know more about Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp?

There are:27 items tagged Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp available in our Library

These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War.

L/Cpl. William Bench 7th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment

William Bench was captured at Arras following an attack on his tank in which he sustained a shrapnel injury to his shoulder. The International Red Cross Archives hold the following information: He was sent to Soignies Hospital in June 1940, and was at St Joseph Hospital in Enghien on 14th of August 1940. He arrived at Stalag VI A on 27th of August 1940, from Dulag VI A. He was still detained at Stalag VI A on 8th of October 1940. He was transferred from there to Stalag VIII B on 18th of October 1940. He escaped from Stalag VIII B on 2nd of September 1944.
He was sent to work in a coal mine, Camp E51 at Klausberg in Silesia, where he contracted emphysema from which he suffered for the rest of his life, and which was a part cause of his death in 1985 in Auckland NZ.
The Red Cross has his capture date as 20th of June 1940, but his military record shows him missing in France on 21st of May 1940, so I am inclined to think that he was captured on 20th of May 1940 (Red Cross would have been informed he was a POW in June). His military record shows that he returned to England on 28th of April 1945. After he escaped he was in Red Army hands, then US Army hands, before arriving in England.
I am interested in hearing from anyone who knew of him at Camp E51, and who may have escaped with him.

Jean Bench

Add to this record.

A/Cpl. Wallace F R "Snow" Hynes

My father, Wallace Hynes, served with the New Zealand Army in WW2 and was a prisoner of war in Italy and in Stalag 6A, I am looking for information, if anyone remembers him or his diaries.

Matt Hynes

Add to this record.

Maurice Delavier

My husband's uncle, Maurice Delavier, was a French POW at Stalag 6a during WWII. He was an artist by profession and while he was there he drew many pencil sketches of fellow prisoners (British, American, Russian and French) as well as camp life. Does anyone remember him?

Liz

Add to this record.

Pte. Edward Stanley "Blondie" Boden Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry

Fascinating and moving to read accounts from ex-POW's in Stalag VII-A Moosburg. My dad, Stan Boden (known as "Blondie") must have been in that same camp. He never told me its name and, like so many men, would rarely talk about those times. Today, they'd be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but for them, as soon as they were shipped home, it was back to the regiment to prepare for the Far East! No help whatsoever! Yet he'd been through Dunkirk, the Middle East, North Africa, Italian POW camp and spent six months on the run in the Italian mountains before being sent to Germany.
I've deduced that Stalag VII Moosburg was his camp from his stories of going into Munich to work on bomb-damaged buildings after air-raids. When he was captured he was asked what his civilian job had been. He answered, "Dressler Placer" - he loaded tiles onto the trucks that went into the kilns for firing (it was a tile-making company). The Germans took this to mean he was a tiler - on roofs! Consequently, he was considered useful on bomb-damaged buildings!
After the war, like others, he kept in touch with at least one of the Germans he'd worked with and vouched for him when the man wanted to emigrate to Canada. Dad had a standing invitation to take his family on a visit but we couldn't afford to do so in the years after the war and then contact was lost. Would Dad have enjoyed reading these accounts? Maybe, maybe not. So hard to know.

G. Boden

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Sam Bainbridge

Among my late mother's papers was the attached photo sent to her in Burscough, Lancs, by Sam Bainbridge, who is presumably one of the men in the picture. The reverse gives the references 5999, K2780, Stalag VII A. My family does not remember Sam, but can anyone explain why two of the faces have been excised? I think I remember my mother saying that's how it arrived, presumably censored - but why?

Keith Jenkins

Add to this record.

L/Sgt. Henry Vies "Ginger" Suggit MM 5DG East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry

My father, Lance Serjeant H.V. Suggit of the East Riding Yeomanry, seconded to the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, was captured south of Brussels on 18 May 1940 whilst attempting to break through a German forward column. After initial treatment for serious wounds in a German field dressing station and hospital, he convalesced in base hospitals set up in Lazarettes in Brugmann and Malines, before recovering sufficiently to be transfered to prison camps in Hemer (Stalag VI A) on 17 September 1940 and then Lamsdorf (Stalag VIII B) on 28 November 1940.
Despite a still not fully functional arm, he bluffed his way onto coalmine working parties for the prospect of better rations, regaining fitness and more lax confinement - conditions useful for escape. Initially based in Morgenroth, he was transferred to Triebitz (party E211) in the Sudetenland, from which he made his first break on 27 August 1941 with two like minded colleagues, TSM Perry and Corporal Pugh - removing bars from their block windows and shinning down knotted sheets. They were on the loose for nearly 3 weeks, covering a significant distance on foot before being caught as they tried to stow aboard a train near Lundenburg. After security processing, they were returned to Lamsdorf and 20 days bread and water in solitary confinement.
Undeterred, he spent the next 8 months keeping a lower profile before securing another outside working party job, this time in a brewery in Hansdorf (party E95), again in the Sudetenland. Within the week, he and two East Yorkshire Regiment chums, Edie Harris and Jim Andrews, had done a bunk, changing into home made civilian garb that they had brought with them and had secreted on arrival.
Freedom was short lived, being apprehended 7 days later near Mueglitz. Two days initial security processing followed in Schoenberg, before being returned to Lamsdorf (as proof that escapers would be caught) and another interrogation, but only 5 days clink - all sticking to a tale indicating appalling conditions in work party E95. Their story and reality were poles apart, but was not checked, otherwise they could have got a year in a straflager. As it was, they were separated and father spent a month in two closely guarded timber working parties (E495 and E364), before a camp transfer to become somebody else's problem.
After a temporary confinement in Parsburg, he was held in what became Stalag 383 at Hohenfels from late August 1942 through to liberation, making two more escape attempts. The first was on 25 August 1943, when he and George Beeson walked out dressed as German guards. They were only loose for just over a day - a consequence of generally tighter German railway security measures around Nuremburg. They subsequently received 30 days solitary in the bunker, but managed not to compromise their modus operandi of getting out.
This enabled another attempt dressed in facsimile German uniform on 17 March 1944, with Australian Charlie Elphick. After passing through the inner gate, they came to grief at the outer security checkpoint, when a clued-up sentry asked too many questions. This time - being apprehended in the enemy's uniform - they were perhaps extremely fortunate only to receive 30 days solitary. The guard who passed them at the inner gate received 14 days of the same.
With a reputation as a persistent escaper, further attempts were problematic. When the Germans evacuated Hohenfels in Spring 1945, my father and others secreted themselves, hunkering down till liberation on 22 April. Cadging lifts to Paris, he was flown by prisoner recovery arrangements in a Dakota to Buckinghamshire and arrived home in Hull a week later.

J R Suggit

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Pte. John Harding 4th Battalion Cheshire Regiment

My father, Jack Harding, was captured at Dunkirk. He was in the following camps: Stalag V1/A, XX1/B, XX1/D and finally Stalag 344. He never talked much about his experience as a prisoner of war and sadly as he is now deceased his story has died with him.
I would love to hear from anyone who was with him at these camps or anyone who had a relative who was at the camps so my family & I can have some idea of what he experienced. I would particularly like to know what happened after the prisoners were liberated. The last date I have is 20.11.1944 when he was at Stalag 344.

Anne Harding

Add to this record.

Henry Thomas Compton 2nd Btn. Traffic Control coy. Royal Army Service Corps

My father, Herbert Dawson, served in Malta and Leros. He was taken prisoner on Leros and was transported to prison camp in Germany. He was in Stalag XIA. But he was in an out for station work camp in Elbigerode. He was able to visit Elbingerode a few years before he passed away. "Faugh-a-Ballagh" - battle cry of Irish origin, meaning "clear the way".

Jacky Pickworth

Add to this record.

Lucien Xavier Favreaux

My grandfather was French and captured by the German's sometime during WWII. He was held at Stalag 6A for a number of years. He was a skilled mechanic and had worked in a foundary in France. He lied when asked what his occupation was and told the Germans he was a gardener. He did not want to be put to work at a job that would aid their war effort. He came home at the end of the war and was reunited with his family but they all said he was very thin.

Carole Davis

Add to this record.

L/Cpl. William Bench 7th Btn. Royal Tank Regiment

William Bench was captured at Arras following an attack on his tank in which he sustained a shrapnel injury to his shoulder. The International Red Cross Archives hold the following information: He was sent to Soignies Hospital in June 1940, and was at St Joseph Hospital in Enghien on 14th of August 1940. He arrived at Stalag VI A on 27th of August 1940, from Dulag VI A. He was still detained at Stalag VI A on 8th of October 1940. He was transferred from there to Stalag VIII B on 18th of October 1940. He escaped from Stalag VIII B on 2nd of September 1944.
He was sent to work in a coal mine, Camp E51 at Klausberg in Silesia, where he contracted emphysema from which he suffered for the rest of his life, and which was a part cause of his death in 1985 in Auckland NZ.
The Red Cross has his capture date as 20th of June 1940, but his military record shows him missing in France on 21st of May 1940, so I am inclined to think that he was captured on 20th of May 1940 (Red Cross would have been informed he was a POW in June). His military record shows that he returned to England on 28th of April 1945. After he escaped he was in Red Army hands, then US Army hands, before arriving in England.
I am interested in hearing from anyone who knew of him at Camp E51, and who may have escaped with him.

Jean Bench

A/Cpl. Wallace F R "Snow" Hynes

My father, Wallace Hynes, served with the New Zealand Army in WW2 and was a prisoner of war in Italy and in Stalag 6A, I am looking for information, if anyone remembers him or his diaries.

Matt Hynes

Maurice Delavier

My husband's uncle, Maurice Delavier, was a French POW at Stalag 6a during WWII. He was an artist by profession and while he was there he drew many pencil sketches of fellow prisoners (British, American, Russian and French) as well as camp life. Does anyone remember him?

Liz

Pte. Edward Stanley "Blondie" Boden Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry

Fascinating and moving to read accounts from ex-POW's in Stalag VII-A Moosburg. My dad, Stan Boden (known as "Blondie") must have been in that same camp. He never told me its name and, like so many men, would rarely talk about those times. Today, they'd be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but for them, as soon as they were shipped home, it was back to the regiment to prepare for the Far East! No help whatsoever! Yet he'd been through Dunkirk, the Middle East, North Africa, Italian POW camp and spent six months on the run in the Italian mountains before being sent to Germany.
I've deduced that Stalag VII Moosburg was his camp from his stories of going into Munich to work on bomb-damaged buildings after air-raids. When he was captured he was asked what his civilian job had been. He answered, "Dressler Placer" - he loaded tiles onto the trucks that went into the kilns for firing (it was a tile-making company). The Germans took this to mean he was a tiler - on roofs! Consequently, he was considered useful on bomb-damaged buildings!
After the war, like others, he kept in touch with at least one of the Germans he'd worked with and vouched for him when the man wanted to emigrate to Canada. Dad had a standing invitation to take his family on a visit but we couldn't afford to do so in the years after the war and then contact was lost. Would Dad have enjoyed reading these accounts? Maybe, maybe not. So hard to know.

G. Boden

Sam Bainbridge

Among my late mother's papers was the attached photo sent to her in Burscough, Lancs, by Sam Bainbridge, who is presumably one of the men in the picture. The reverse gives the references 5999, K2780, Stalag VII A. My family does not remember Sam, but can anyone explain why two of the faces have been excised? I think I remember my mother saying that's how it arrived, presumably censored - but why?

Keith Jenkins

L/Sgt. Henry Vies "Ginger" Suggit MM 5DG East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry

My father, Lance Serjeant H.V. Suggit of the East Riding Yeomanry, seconded to the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, was captured south of Brussels on 18 May 1940 whilst attempting to break through a German forward column. After initial treatment for serious wounds in a German field dressing station and hospital, he convalesced in base hospitals set up in Lazarettes in Brugmann and Malines, before recovering sufficiently to be transfered to prison camps in Hemer (Stalag VI A) on 17 September 1940 and then Lamsdorf (Stalag VIII B) on 28 November 1940.
Despite a still not fully functional arm, he bluffed his way onto coalmine working parties for the prospect of better rations, regaining fitness and more lax confinement - conditions useful for escape. Initially based in Morgenroth, he was transferred to Triebitz (party E211) in the Sudetenland, from which he made his first break on 27 August 1941 with two like minded colleagues, TSM Perry and Corporal Pugh - removing bars from their block windows and shinning down knotted sheets. They were on the loose for nearly 3 weeks, covering a significant distance on foot before being caught as they tried to stow aboard a train near Lundenburg. After security processing, they were returned to Lamsdorf and 20 days bread and water in solitary confinement.
Undeterred, he spent the next 8 months keeping a lower profile before securing another outside working party job, this time in a brewery in Hansdorf (party E95), again in the Sudetenland. Within the week, he and two East Yorkshire Regiment chums, Edie Harris and Jim Andrews, had done a bunk, changing into home made civilian garb that they had brought with them and had secreted on arrival.
Freedom was short lived, being apprehended 7 days later near Mueglitz. Two days initial security processing followed in Schoenberg, before being returned to Lamsdorf (as proof that escapers would be caught) and another interrogation, but only 5 days clink - all sticking to a tale indicating appalling conditions in work party E95. Their story and reality were poles apart, but was not checked, otherwise they could have got a year in a straflager. As it was, they were separated and father spent a month in two closely guarded timber working parties (E495 and E364), before a camp transfer to become somebody else's problem.
After a temporary confinement in Parsburg, he was held in what became Stalag 383 at Hohenfels from late August 1942 through to liberation, making two more escape attempts. The first was on 25 August 1943, when he and George Beeson walked out dressed as German guards. They were only loose for just over a day - a consequence of generally tighter German railway security measures around Nuremburg. They subsequently received 30 days solitary in the bunker, but managed not to compromise their modus operandi of getting out.
This enabled another attempt dressed in facsimile German uniform on 17 March 1944, with Australian Charlie Elphick. After passing through the inner gate, they came to grief at the outer security checkpoint, when a clued-up sentry asked too many questions. This time - being apprehended in the enemy's uniform - they were perhaps extremely fortunate only to receive 30 days solitary. The guard who passed them at the inner gate received 14 days of the same.
With a reputation as a persistent escaper, further attempts were problematic. When the Germans evacuated Hohenfels in Spring 1945, my father and others secreted themselves, hunkering down till liberation on 22 April. Cadging lifts to Paris, he was flown by prisoner recovery arrangements in a Dakota to Buckinghamshire and arrived home in Hull a week later.

J R Suggit

Pte. John Harding 4th Battalion Cheshire Regiment

My father, Jack Harding, was captured at Dunkirk. He was in the following camps: Stalag V1/A, XX1/B, XX1/D and finally Stalag 344. He never talked much about his experience as a prisoner of war and sadly as he is now deceased his story has died with him.
I would love to hear from anyone who was with him at these camps or anyone who had a relative who was at the camps so my family & I can have some idea of what he experienced. I would particularly like to know what happened after the prisoners were liberated. The last date I have is 20.11.1944 when he was at Stalag 344.

Anne Harding

Henry Thomas Compton 2nd Btn. Traffic Control coy. Royal Army Service Corps

My father, Herbert Dawson, served in Malta and Leros. He was taken prisoner on Leros and was transported to prison camp in Germany. He was in Stalag XIA. But he was in an out for station work camp in Elbigerode. He was able to visit Elbingerode a few years before he passed away. "Faugh-a-Ballagh" - battle cry of Irish origin, meaning "clear the way".

Jacky Pickworth

Lucien Xavier Favreaux

My grandfather was French and captured by the German's sometime during WWII. He was held at Stalag 6A for a number of years. He was a skilled mechanic and had worked in a foundary in France. He lied when asked what his occupation was and told the Germans he was a gardener. He did not want to be put to work at a job that would aid their war effort. He came home at the end of the war and was reunited with his family but they all said he was very thin.

Carole Davis

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- Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp during the Second World War -

Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp

Those known to have been held in or employed at
Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp
during the Second World War 1939-1945.

The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

Announcements

Want to know more about Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp?

Recomended Reading.

Links

The Wartime Memories Project - Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp during the Second World War -

Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp

Those known to have been held in or employed at Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Campduring the Second World War 1939-1945.

The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

Announcements

Want to know more about Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp?

Recomended Reading.

Links

The Wartime Memories Project
- Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp during the Second World War -

Those known to have been held in or employed at
Stalag 6A Prisoner of War Camp
during the Second World War 1939-1945.