Memories of the War - Edgar Herbert Smalcombe

Edgar was a prisoner of war. According to Grandma, he was in Italy and Germany. I don't know anything about him being in Italy, but he was in Germany. I don't know if the camp was liberated or how he got out but there is an account of them leaving the camp and the march that they went on, which I do intend to transcribe at some stage.

There are quite a lot of photographs of when he was in the camp. There's his ID card, there's the letter that was sent to his family to say that he was missing in action (doesn't necessarily mean he was killed, he may be a prisoner of war which he turned out to be) and there are one or two letters that the family wrote to him which were returned. They didn't get to him. There are some maps and the maps I am told were produced in the camp. They are written on paper; it's like wax paper that was used to wrap Red Cross food parcels. They are incredibly detailed. They are quite amazing really. One or two of them have a scale on it. We don't know how they are produced. The people in the camp would be from all different services. There would be some from the Air Force, as well as the Army. One or two of the maps have got scales on, as though they've been copied from the map, but we don't know. I can't tell you how they were produced. I can't tell you exactly where he was held. Dad always kept the maps in the Atlas because he was trying to match the places, as well as keeping them flat and protecting them.

Uncle Edgar only had one child and he died before 1940. My dad was the oldest nephew and Dad and Edgar we quite close. I don't know whether they came via grandma or went straight to dad but we got them when my dad died.

Did you know Edgar? Did he talk about his experiences?
Yes, but the thing is, when you're in your teens, is it a conversation you have? When he died I was mid-twenties and I didn't see him so often. When he was with the family he would talk about family, he wouldn't talk about his experiences here. They were a very close family so there was a grandma, a sister and three brothers. They got together often. They never lived far apart. He was a lovely man.