John Bramsgrove's internment and Annie Bramsgrove's war work

John Walter Bramsgrove joined the Tower Hamlets Rifle Brigade at age 21. He was captured in North Africa in May 1941, after being lost in the desert and staying with a very hospitable Bedouin family. He was held in Italian PoW camps in 1943. He escaped but was recaptured and taken to PoW camps in Germany and Poland. His war diary records his repatriation. The diary was filled with "grief, grief, grief": he had dysentery, he scraped a living, and he won a raffle of Red Cross parcels which he shared with a Russian woman. He also had a magazine produced for the ship that took them to North Africa.

He was chairman of the Essex PoW group and sent money to the Red Cross. He became a postman and secretary of the Barking British Legion and served as a standard bearer on parades.

He married Annie Evelyn Humphrey in 1939.

Annie worked as a welder in the Ford's factory, Dagenham. She also worked as an ARP (Air Raid Precautions warden). Her aunt was in the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) and married an American airman; she wrote from a GI holding camp and went to the US on the Queen Mary boat.