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Major Dick Williams
Sixty years ago 24-year-old Dick Williams set off through the woods of northern Germany in search of a “refugee” camp. The previous day, a German officer had agreed to hand the camp over to the advancing British. 749 total views
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Joy Taverner – Queen Alexandria’s Nurse
My husband’s grandmother (now 82) was a nurse during the War and has a book-worth of stories to tell. The following are 2 letters that she has written to me describing her nursing work during the beach landings and entering Belsen… 946 total views
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Frank Johnson (63rd ATR)
Driver in World War II: British Royal Artillery 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment. 527 total views
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Liberation Dolls
‘Liberation dolls’ come to auction in Newbury. When the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, a party of British Red Cross nurses and doctors stayed and tended those they could help back to health. 249 total views
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Richard Carr-Gomm
Major Richard Culling Carr-Gomm, OBE (2 January 1922 – 27 October 2008) was the founder of the Abbeyfield Society, the Morpeth Society and the Carr-Gomm Society, UK charities providing care and housing for disadvantaged and lonely people. 1,515 total views
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Pte S C Hurkett
Pte S C Hurkett was born in Minster, in the Isle of Sheppey. Enlisted/Conscripted 4 April 1940 to 6 DTC RASC (Herne Bay Kent) Posted to 59th Division Supply Column Qualified as butcher 301 Infantry Brigade Coy RASC, designation changed from Driver to Private Posted to 155 Details Issue Depot (DID) on 25 May 1943 based at Llandough Castle, Glamorgan, Wales 19 June 1943 Physical Training Instructor course returned to 155 DID As part of Airborne Corp 155 DID “enplaned 20th September 1944” – flying from Cottesmore 26th September as part of Airborne Forward Delivery Airfield(AFDAG) – including 1st Light Anti-Aircraft Battery flew in 209 Dakotas, escorted by 182 fighters of AFDG and…
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To Meet in Hell
British doctor who was forced to play God in Belsen: He was one of the first to stumble on the horrors of the SS camp in a forest – now, 75 years on, a new book captures the depths of wickedness he witnessed as he struggled to decide who could be saved. 368 total views
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Major N.A. Miller – 224th Parachute Field Ambulance, RAMC
My grandfather, Nathaniel Miller FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) was a doctor in peacetime, and during WWII became a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps (a British Army specialist corps providing medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in time of war and peace). This photo (below) hangs on my wall at home, taken in December 1944, several months after their unit’s involvement in the D-Day landings and Pegasus Bridge (a story for another day) and taken 5 months before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. My grandfather is third from the right, front row, Major N.A. Miller. On 15 April 1945 Major Miller headed…
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Evan Griffiths – Mobile Field Hospital
Consultant surgeon Bridgend hospitals, south Wales, 1951-60, consultant geriatrician Wrexham Maelor Hospital, north Wales, 1961-81 (b Llanelly 1916; q St Bartholomew’s 1940; FRCSEd, FRCS), died from a myocardial infarction on 28 July 1998. 368 total views
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History Learning Site Account
When Bergen-Belsen was handed over to British troops in April 1945, little could have prepared them for what they saw at the concentration camp. Belsen had originally been built as a prison for those arrested in Nazi Germany itself. However, as the war in Europe drew to a close in 1945, prisoners from Eastern Europe had been moved to the camp. When the British got to Belsen on April 15th, the prisoners were in appalling conditions and between 400 to 500 were dying each day. 749 total views
A NEW ONLINE ARCHIVE
