Stanley Francis Moyes

Rice and hard labour in Stalag IVG

This is my great grandfather’s story. Stanley Francis Moyes was 19 years old when war broke out in 1939. He enlisted almost straight away with some friends from his work place and was assigned to a regiment in the Royal Artillery.  Artillery soldiers had to work with large guns

To begin with Stanley spent quite a long-time training on Salisbury Plain, where he learnt how to aim, load and fire big guns, skills which involved a lot of teamwork. The main gun he worked with was called the light howitzer which was then a new gun. This gun fired shells which weighed 25 lbs each and required a crew of four or six to load and fire the gun. He also was trained to use a Bren gun which was a type of machine gun.

In 1941 it was decided that his regiment would be sent to fight the Germans and Italians in North Africa. His ship departed from Greenock in Scotland for a long sea voyage down round the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. His ship stopped off at Durban and he stayed with a family there for a brief time whilst preparing for the next part of the journey on to Egypt. He then continued on to what was called the C theatre of war.  This was mainly a desert area. 

Stanley was involved in a battle for the Tobruk area in Libya fighting against the Germans under the command of General Rommel. There were several battles in this strategically important area, but in January 1942 the Germans managed to encircle the Allied armies, who were then forced to surrender. Many thousands of men were taken prisoner and unfortunately Stanley was one of them. Stanley said that just before he was captured it was terrible for the soldiers to have to push all their guns and equipment over the cliffs into the sea. This was so that the Germans didn’t get hold of the weapons and vehicles and use them themselves

Stanley and other members of his regiment were handed over to the Italians and taken up through Italy by train into Germany. In his experience the Italians were much crueller than the Germans and a result of this was he never ever wanted to visit Italy in later life.

He ended up in a prisoner of war camp in Stalag IVG at Oschatz, Poland - which was somewhere between Leipzig and Dresden. It was a work camp and he had to work six days a week in a stone quarry, breaking up stone to be used by the Germans for road building. Fortunately, he survived the very harsh living conditions and hard work and remained a prisoner until the end of the war in 1945. Eventually, the camp was freed by the Russian army.

Slowly, he adjusted back to life in the UK. Like many people who fought in WW2, he never wanted to talk about what had happened to him. My grandmother remembers that her father didn’t like rice or corned beef because these foods reminded him of his time in prison.  

When he came back home, he was able to go back to the job he was doing before the war at a plant nursery.  The village, where he lived, welcomed him and other local soldiers home with a special celebration evening!

Told by Zack and Frances Foley