James, J E

,

John Ernest James

Family/Last name:
James
Forename(s) and initial(s):
John Ernest
Nationality:
British
Military Unit:
British Army, King's Shropshire Light Infantry
Place of capture:
Dunkirk, France
Date of capture:
1940
Camp
Stalag VIIIB Lamsdorf / Stalag 344
Data sources
Other Sources (Relative's Report)
View a commemorative certificate for this prisoner

John Ernest James

King’s Shropshire Light Infantry

John Ernest James was a member of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. He was captured in 1940. In the early days of the German onslaught against the west in May 1940, the 1st KSLI advanced into Belgium via Brussels but was then caught up in the fighting retreat to Dunkirk. As one of the rearguard units, 1st KSLI saw a great deal of hard fighting and was one of the very last British battalions to leave the port of Dunkirk. Their formidable commanding officer, Lt. Col. Bryans, said that “the men acquitted themselves magnificently and fought like tigers throughout. Shropshire has every reason to be proud of its county regiment”.

However, history has tended to overlook the fate of the British soldiers who never made it back across the Channel: 40,000 of them were marched off by the Germans to captivity. To boost national morale, the British press wrote about the soldiers who escaped rather than those who were left behind, but the latter suffered a miserable fate. Many of those 40,000 men were marched hundreds of miles into Germany and Poland and spent the rest of the war working in mines, fields and factories.

John Ernest James was a POW at Stalag VIIIB/344 from 1940 – 1945. He was with a Working Party, working with a pick & shovel, possibly in a mine.

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