This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.
If you enjoy this siteplease consider making a donation.
Site Home
WW2 Home
Add Stories
WW2 Search
Library
Help & FAQs
WW2 Features
Airfields
Allied Army
Allied Air Forces
Allied Navy
Axis Forces
Home Front
Battles
Prisoners of War
Allied Ships
Women at War
Those Who Served
Day-by-Day
Library
The Great War
Submissions
Add Stories
Time Capsule
TWMP on Facebook
Childrens Bookshop
FAQ's
Help & FAQs
Glossary
Volunteering
Contact us
News
Bookshop
About
208233Sgt. William Mole Leck
British Army 5th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment
from:North Shields
My father, Sgt William Leck, served with the 5th Battalion East Yorks Regt. He joined the army at Beverley Barracks in about 1938. In 1941 the Battalion was posted from Poole, Dorset to North Africa and during one of the battles there was injured in his head by grenade shrapnel. He was captured by the Italians and sent to a hospital near Naples (I think). Some time later he was handed over to the Germans and sent to Stalag IVB where he spent the rest of the war until liberated by the Russian Army in 1945.All this information was passed to me by my mother as my father never spoke about his combat experiences or his incarceration as a POW. On one occasion, however, on a visit to me in Germany where I was serving, we visited a British war cemetary near Venlo in Holland and he became visibly upset when he read some of the East Yorks names on the headstones.
My father died aged 81 and apart from the above I have no knowledge of his wartime experiences and would love to know if there is any way to obtain access to his Battlion's War Diary to find what action he was wounded in and if there is a definitive book or papers about Stalag IVB.
Related Content:
Can you help us to add to our records?
The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them
Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area?
If so please let us know.
Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice.
Celebrate your own Family History
Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc.
Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.
The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items.
The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.
If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.
Hosted by:
Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
- All Rights Reserved
We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.