This is the only Feldpost POW card I have seen relating to the 16th DLI, so it’s wonderful to have a copy on the website. This would be the first communication home from a new British POW, whose family would previously have been notified from the War Office that he had been posted ‘missing’. For a wife or mother to receive such a card after a period of up to several weeks of not knowing whether their loved one was alive or dead, must have been both indescribably uplifting and a huge relief.

Compare the card to this one, the Italian equivalent, which 16 DLI soldiers who were taken POW in Tunisia by the Germans and then handed over to the Italians, sent home and this one, sent home by a soldier of the Middlesex Regiment from the same Italian Feldpost camp just a couple of months later.

NEXT EDWARD SEFTON ITEM

Feldpost 31979 card, L/Cpl Edward Sefton, 16 DLI