In January 1943 Cyril Reford Babey, my Great Great Uncle, left West Wellow in Hampshire to join the Royal Hampshire Regiment in North Africa. By March he was listed as missing and it was later discovered that he had been taken as a prisoner of War and placed at POW Camp 66, Capua Transit camp in Italy.

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This is a letter that he wrote to his mother on 12th March 1943 to let her know that he is safe. He mentions his wife Amy – to whom he had been married for three years and was expecting their first child. Prisoner of War letters were subjected to censorship and therefore opened and examined before being sent. This was to prevent intelligence gathering from the enemy.

Cyril Babey POW 2

He explains that “we are allowed to write a card and letter every ten days” and that he was with two other men who were also from Wellow. They were Gilbert Bungay and Wilfred Judd.

Wilfred and Cyril managed to escape the camp at least once but were quickly found and taken back to camp. Eventually all three soldiers were transferred to a German Stalag (prisoner of war camp) where they stayed for the remainder of WW2. All three men survived the war and eventually returned home.

 

When Cyril returned to Wellow in 1945 he met his daughter for the first time – Monica was, by that time, two years old. Cyril never spoke about his time as a prisoner of war but his letters home are still treasured by his daughter today.