posted on 2024-06-05, 19:04authored byTheir Finest Hour Project Team
<p dir="ltr">Andrew Hamilton was from Westerdale, Halkirk. He was a Private in the Seaforth Highlanders. He was in Horse Transport before joining MT Transport as a dispatch rider.</p><p>He was posted missing around June 1940- he had been captured at St Valery. He was a prisoner at Stalag VIIIB. He escaped and was captured, escaped again but was caught again, then was sent to salt mines in Poland where he was fed only bread and water. He escaped for a third time and was taken in and hidden by a Czechoslovakian family who farmed in Poland. He stayed there until the end of the war, joining a local partisan force fighting the Germans. After the war ended, he and a friend made their way to the American lines and was sent home from there.</p><p>In spring 1946 his family was sent word from the War Office that he was alive. It was the first news they had had about him since a postcard from the prisoner of war camp in 1941.</p>
1. Andrew Hamilton Army papers (10 items)
2. Photographs of Andrew Hamilton (5 items)
3. Postcard from Stalag VIIIB POW camp (1 item)
4. Photograph of Czech couple who sheltered Andrew Hamilton after escaping POW camp (1 item)
5. Photographs taken in Poland (7 items)
6. Photograph of Andrew Hamilton and two comrades and two Poles (1 item)
7. Photographs, Andrew Hamilton and two comrades (2 items)
8. Poem about Ian Mackenzie with photograph of Andrew Hamilton with the author (2 items)
9. Printed background information on Andrew Hamilton (3 item)
Person the story/items relate to
Andrew Hamilton
Person who shared the story/items
Marilyn Mackay
Relationship between the subject of the story and its contributor
He was their uncle.
Type of submission
Shared at Nucleus: The Nuclear and Caithness Archives, Caithness on 25 November 2023.