Mills, H L

, , ,

Gunner Herbert Louis Mills

Family/Last name:
Mills
Forename(s) and initial(s):
Herbert Louis
Place of birth:
Douglas
Date of birth:
22/2/1912
Nationality:
British
Service number:
1478145
Military Unit:
British Army, Royal Artillery, 15th (Isle of Man) Light Anti Aircraft Regiment, 129th Light Anti-Aircraft Battery
Rank when captured:
Gunner
Place of capture:
Suda Bay, Crete
Date of capture:
1941
POW number:
22579
Camp
Stalag VIIIB Lamsdorf / Stalag 344
Working Party
E231 Kerzdorf
Data sources
The National Archives (UK)Other Sources (Family correspondence.)
View a commemorative certificate for this prisoner

Son-in-law Richard Rimmer provided the following information:

We have recently re-located my wife’s father’s photo book from his time in Stalag VIIIB […]

The book has his record of the march* to eventual meeting up with US army and eventual freedom, I see it is the same route as some others on your website.

It also has a lot of names and addresses, mainly in pencil and some very feint and hard to make out but have done all I can with it. Herbert Louis Mills Addresses

It is interesting that Herbie was on 2 of the football pictures under different teams ?, he was a keen footballer and also a very keen motorcyclist, after the war he took part in the local TT and Manx Grand Prix races and later became a travelling marshal. […]

[One of the pictures] has written on the back K.D.O. E231 which sounds like a Arbeitskommando abbreviation and number but I see no reference to E231 anywhere (I think his group were in coal mines somewhere). […]

Another old friend of mine Jimmy Corlett (sadly now deceased), a fellow radio ham, used to tell of being in a POW camp, don’t know if it was the same one or not, that they managed to smuggle a radio valve in from people outside the wire and made a radio receiver. He told about them getting in the loft above the commandant’s office and pinching the transformer off his bell, and he always wondered why the bell stopped working but never found out.

On the MAPS website it tells of a radio hidden inside a hollowed out log by the stove, the radio is in the regiment museum at Castletown, it may be the same one but not sure.

External links:

Posts related to this prisoner

    Please include as much information and pictures as you can so that we can create a record of each man’s experience. With tens of thousands of POW records already on site please help us if you can by including at least one of the following: service number, POW number or date of birth.

    Please note that a valid email address is required to submit this form. Your address will be stored in our website database and will be visible to the editors who will process the information you have submitted. We may use it to contact you for clarification or to discuss your submission. Your email address will not appear on the public-facing area of this website and will never be sold or passed to any third party. If you do not want your email address to be stored, please do not submit this form!

    Your details

    POW details

    Please don't guess these details! Only fill out the fields you know for certain.






    Many thanks for taking the time to help improve our data. We are indebted to thousands of volunteers and family members of former POWs for their time and efforts. Thank you for joining their ranks!
    Click Submit to send us the information you have entered.