azyeoman

Any help in translating the above would be more greatly appreciated. I hope you find these as interesting as the first ones.

the second letter

1st letter continued.

The first of two letters.

Something Dr./Capt. Lambrecht had printed/published.

Another document.

Here's the 1916 WWI photo that came with the group. You can see stacked rifles in the center and a person sitting to the left of them.

You are lucky to have such a complete grouping, with documents and the medals.

Thank you, I think so too. There is even more that I'll put up when I've got a chance.

Those are really nice. How many nations do you collect?

Here's a thread in another area of GMIC on Dr./Capt. Lambrecht's group as shown above that is interesting. The translations really brought out the story; a hearty and big thanks to Bernhard Holst for his help!!!

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php/topic/57064-lt-konrad-lambrecht-and-his-wife/

Hi Peter,

I can't recommend enough Midge Gillies book The Barbed Wire University: The Real Lives of Allied Prisoners of War in The Second World War published by Aurum Press in 2011. It's very well researched and thouroughly discusses the trials and tribulations and ordeals of the Allied PoWs in German and Italian hands as well as the FEPOWs. It's full of anecdotes too, which make it a good read and anyone interested in PoWs should buy a copy. It's out in paperback now.

I've been told that people can get Rec Cross medals of their own by becomming a member of a Red Cross or St. John's Organization now; e.g., UK, Canada or Japan. Is that true?

A little colour from the Iberian Peninsula; Legion Condor bar with a tailor's label also.

Everyone, beautiful bars. Most people dont like the Westwall medal, but I really like what it adds to a medal bar. It is not the typical red, white, and black...

I agree and that's one of the reasons it's nice to get bars with Westwall medals or from other countries. I particularly like the Condor Legion bars. Here's an interesting one medal, Westwall bar with a tailor label; quite unusual to find.

A little TR Luftwaffe pair with a round three (3).

A third account was written by Sgt. Bill Cooper (PoW Stories).

"Then someone shouted we were passing Capri. And an hour or two later, "it's Naples." How did they know? Then we were alongside the dock and the chaps on deck started to disembark. Then we were ordered to climb up on deck, it took hours. I managed, but only with great difficulty. A lot of chaps in that hold never got out! On the deck there were firemen with breathing apparatus and lifting slings and on the quayside there were ambulances and Carabinieri. There was also a hearse or two! I was soaking wet, stinking and filthy as I stumbled down the gangway. At the bottom I was offered a cigarette as though this made all well. I followed the crowd and climbed into a railway goods van and fell fast asleep.

The next thing I remember is being dragged out of the van feet first by two very young and small Italian soldiers, who for some reason were crying. Then came the usual shambles, out of the railway yard and up a lane towards a large barbed-wire prisoner of war cage. We passed soldiers and civilians on the way all of whom had tears in their eyes. Then we were in the cage. This was a prisoner's transit camp - Campo 66 at Capua, near Naples. We were each given a blanket, a lump of bread and pushed into a hut; there were no beds, and only a clean wooden floor. It appeared that the camp although controlled by the Italians was administered by a staff of British P.O.W.s There was a vague promise of Red Cross parcels, medical care and a lot of other things, but by now I had gone back into my shell and was sleeping all day again and was past caring. A kindly chap brought me soup and bread each day and told me of plans to have the lot of us examined.

Then it happened again. I woke up in the middle of the night, went to the rear of the hut, found water, removed my clothes and cleaned them and myself. In this state I was discovered by two sentries who did not know what to do with me. So they waited until I finished and then escorted me back to the hut and my waiting blanket. Next day, wearing only my boots and the blanket, I hung my clothes out to dry. At this stage Red Cross parcels arrived to great excitement. But anti-climax, there was no food, just toilet things. I was not too disappointed. I got a very good razor, shaving brush, toothbrush, toothpaste, a small mirror, a bar of Lifebuoy soup and a "housewife," (this contained needles, thread, wool, buttons, etc.) My comrades were mad. No food, but worst of all no cigarettes.

Then an Italian officer arrived with prisoner of war cards which we could send home to our next of kin. Who should be acting as "dogsbody" to this officer but none other than my wretched trouble making Corporal? He looked well fed and already had a good command of the Italian language. Apparently he was a member of the camp staff, it was the last time I ever saw the wretch. I filled a card in knowing my mother would never receive it; of course she never did! The Corporal departed on the heels of his master carrying the box of cards and the officers' hat and gloves. But he left me with a legacy. With his knowledgeable and smooth tongue he had informed a lot of simple soldiers that I had been solely responsible for a lot of men's deaths, this information was passed on and so I became an outsider. Even after I moved on to Campo 53 my reputation followed me.

Well some more Red Cross parcels arrived, no food but each of us received ten cigarettes and wool socks and underwear. I gave five cigarettes to the chap who had fed me during my depressed period, he was delighted and surprised. I found my friend of the blunt razor and gave him three cigarettes. I used the last two to have my head shaved for lice had appeared. About this time a Red Cross representative arrived at the camp and a great many men gave evidence as to the cruel treatment we had received in transit. I was now regaining my senses and knew now why the soldiers and civilians had cried when we arrived. We really had been brought back from the dead, what a state we must have been in, but I never thought it was cruelty. The Italians were never capable of being cruel; it was just that they were totally inefficient and furthermore just did not have the same standards of rations, hygiene and administration. The word atrocity did not come into use until some years later, just as well, for my bitter comrades were busy building a big case. I never gave evidence; I suppose I was considered too stupid. But I am glad really, when one considers Auschwitz and Belsen we were small fry, anyway nothing came of it, and I have never seen a written word about the affair.

So we went on receiving a bowl of soup and about six ounces of bread a day and occasionally an apple or a tomato, the British camp staff were corrupt and had complete control of all Red Cross goods arriving. When the Italians started issuing ten cigarettes a week to each man a huge black market started. You could buy almost anything for a few cigarettes! I used to pass my ration around the hut but even this created jealousy and some men thought I was trying to buy friendship.

After three or four weeks in Campo 66 we were herded down to the railway siding and loaded onto goods wagons, after being locked in we were shunted up and down and then moved off northwards."

Steve Loper who was taken prisoner in N. Africa wrote this description of Campo 66, " Eventually the train was pulled aboard the ferry boat and we were on our way to the town of Capua, Italy. The train passed through the City of Pompei where I traded my high school class ring for four loaves of bread and 50 lira. I shared the bread with my buddies but don't know what happened to the 50 lira. Soon the train arrived at our camp, Campo P. G. 66 near the city of Capua, not too far from Naples. This would be our home for the next five months. Everyone was depressed and our future did not look too bright. I developed a fever, apparently from a wound I received during the bombing back in Palermo and an infection had set in on my back. The area turned a dark color. A German doctor removed debris from the wound and the area was dressed and treated with sulfa drugs.

The Italian guards were always singing opera as they walked guard at night. We said they were afraid of the dark. Occasionally, the Germans came to the camp to get POWs to work on the docks in Naples. We would volunteer hoping to get a chance to escape, or be taken in by friendly Italians. On one occasion one of the POWs jumped from the truck and started picking fruit near a home. A man ran out of his house with his shotgun in his hand. The German guard immediately pulled out his Lugar pistol. I thought for a moment we would witness a shootout but the Italian backed down.

Mt. Vesuvius was in plain view of our camp. It was majestic. Steam would release from the top and clouds would form in the afternoon."

Phillip Green with Norman Milson RAF (BBC) gave another description of Campo 66, which apparently was before the Germans and Italians built huts. "I related the episode of our capture in the Western desert after being forced to bail out of our stricken Wellington at Tobruk on the night of September 24th 1942. After a series of journeys that totalled nearly 1000 miles, uncomfortably on the backs of rickety Italian lorries, we eventually arrived just outside the port of Tripoli, and with a couple of hundred other prisoners,the remnant of nearly thirty thousand, including the large garrison at Tobruk in May/June 1942. Gradually these were all taken to Italy and/or Germany, increasingly so after the Battle of Alamein October 1942, when the German and Italian armies were routed. It was widely thought that General Montgomery would reach Tripoli by Xmas 1942, but for some reason or other did not until the middle of January 1943. However, on New Year's day the remnant including yours truly, was suddenly ordered down to the docks after darkness fell, where we were ignominiously thrust below decks, battened down on a dirty, battered, old tramp steamship,that set course for Sicily across the Meditteranean and it occurred to some that there ws a possibility English submarines would be prowling around to sink the ship! Not a comfortable feeling as we peered through the darkened hold-praying! However, the night proved our saviour, and as dawn rose, we entered the port of Palermo a large bustling town through which we were marched down to the railway station. We looked a very sorry sight, unshaven, dirty, ragged, and though we tried with the aid of a sergeant or two to "swing those arms", it was hard to imagine a more decrepit rabble. Not helped either by the local populace, who hissed and booed, the more cowardly chucking old fruit and vegetables at us. These same crowds later were the first to cheer and wave flags as the Allied armies swept through Sicily after their triumphs in North Africa. At any rate, we entrained for Messina and from there across the toe of Italy until we reached Capua, Camp No.66 a few mile south of Naples. (It is actually about 30km north of Naples.) Situated on a flat plain, the ancient volcano of Vesuvius glowering over us, the so-called transit camp was a mess. The only accommodation, some tatty tents, into which five or six inhabitants competed for space, an ancient straw palliasse our sole piece of bedding, covered with a moth eaten blanket. Tents were scattered haphazardly, not in lines. Somewhere a larger marquee housed the cookhouse, from where issued what were laughingly called meals-an insult to the word. We received, apart from a small piece of bread and it could only have been a couple of ounces, the usual Italian 'soup', really hot water into which had been thrown a few handfuls of rice,served twice a day. It was really fortunate for us that the first Red Cross parcels of food arrived which transformed our lives and literally saved us from starvation. Parenthetically, when I volunteered for the RAF in January 1941, I weighed in at eleven stone(154 pounds), At the end of our incarceration and following a week or two normal meals in England-May 1945- my weight had shrunk to eight and a half stones (119 pounds)."

TR with Romanian and with it's original ribbon bar too.

It's not TR, but it's interesting with the Thai Order of the White Elephant.

Another small two medal bar to the 22nd Art.

Common but not often mounted.

A very unusual two place medal bar.

That's one of the nice things about British medals; they can be reribboned and mounted and nobody cares; it's different for German, French and US etc. That'll be a beauty when it's given the TLC it deserves. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful bar! Congrats!

Any examples to post??? : )