The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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261313 William Thomas Motley British Army Royal Sussex Regiment from:Bradford, Padiham William Motley was taken as a POW and held in Camp 78 at Sulmona, Italy (1942-43) and at Stalag 4f Hartsmannsdorf, Germany (1943-45) I was only 6 years old when my grandfather, William Motley, died in 1966 and I have only a few memories of him. Unfortunately, my father also died when I was young and I never got the opportunity to quiz him about his and my grandfather's past life. Although I didn’t know for certain, I had long suspected that my grandfather had been a POW as there existed a letter from the Regimental Paymaster dated December 1942 to William’s partner saying that William had been reported missing and that she would continue to receive an allowance. In recent years I have been able to find out that William was 42 when he joined the Royal Sussex Regiment and that he was sent out to the Western Desert and captured around the 27th of October that year, possibly during the Battle of El Alamein which was being fought at this time. In May 1943 it was reported that he had been sent to Camp 78 Sulmona in Italy and that he was wounded, presumably this happened the previous October. Following the Italian Armistice in September 1943 it appears that many of the POWs in Sulmona escaped. I don’t know if William had tried to escape and was recaptured or if he had remained in the camp, but he was captured again by the Germans and sent to Stalag 4f, Hartmannsdorf in Germany, where he remained until the end of the war. Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal Sussex Regiment Western Desert Campaign in North Africa Prigione di Guerra (Campo) P.G. 78 Prisoner of War Camp Italian Campaign Stalag 4F Prisoner of War Camp Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. 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. Contact us. 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: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library 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.