³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Guard on behalf of John Cecil Larkin and has been added to the site with his permission…

I was twenty years of age at the outbreak of war in 1939 and I joined up in 1940 with the Grenadier Guards at Brigade headquarters.

I was captured with the Eighth Army on the Marath Line in Egypt and taken as a prisoner of war.

I was in a prisoner in a camp in Italy where I had to work for a small pittance. Eventually I managed to escape, hiding in hedgerows and fields until I managed to find the British and American lines at Siena.

I came back to Britain and went next to Stone Castle in Scotland then to Windsor.

One ironic note though, before I was finally released I was in the Infantry and on release I was paid £48, less the amount they calculated, I would have earned in the work camp.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.