Category Archives: James “Jimmy” Peters

British Captives Drank Champagne

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The following two newspaper articles were provided by Vanda Jessopp, daughter of Stanley Thomas Dunn, a POW was interned with Jimmy Peters in Camp 59. (See “Stanley Thomas Dunn.”)

The Germans Got Merely Rice-Stew
Their British Captives Drank Champagne

After being held in an Italian camp for two years Private J. Peters, R.A.M.C. has arrived back at his Halchard-road (Upper Halloway) home after travelling through Turkey, Egypt and South Africa. He said to-day:

“The Germans made us work 17 hours a day for seven days a week in a working party in Tripoli, but as it was on a food dump we enjoyed it. When the Jerries were lining up for rice stew we were lying in the shade drinking sherry and champagne and eating 7 lb. tins of ham. It was nothing to eat a whole tin of pears at a time.”

He is to marry Miss Joan Lines, Falkland-road, Honsey.

Caption for two photos:
Pte. James Peters and Miss Joan Lines.

They Want Polish

“Razor blades and good boot polish are what British war prisoners want most,” Private Jimmy Peters told a Hornsey British Legion meeting. Recently repatriated, he was in eight camps in Italy and Germany.

Stanley Thomas Dunn

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At left, Stanley Thomas Dunn, 5th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment; at right, James (Jimmy) Peters, Royal Army Medical Corps. Photo taken in Camp 59, Servigliano.

My friend Anne Copley met Vanda Jessopp and her husband Peter last November at the 2017 Fontanellato–Monte San Martino Trust Luncheon in London. They have since exchanged information about Vanda’s father, Stanley Dunn, that they are allowing me to share here.

Stanley Thomas Dunn (Trooper 7908395, 5th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment), was captured in North Africa on April 8, 1941.

He was born November 6, 1919. He died February 22, 2003.

Here is the apparent chronology of his internments:

From Africa, Stanley was transported to Sicily (where the POWs built a road). From Sicily he was sent to Servigliano (P.G. 59), then Fontanellato (P.G. 49), and finally Sforzesca (P.G. 146/18). He escaped from Sforzesca and in time was able to make his way to Switzerland, where he lived in Camp d’Eoades in Arosa, Switzerland, until his repatriation.

It’s somewhat of a mystery why Stanley would have been sent from Servigliano, which was an “other ranks” camp to Fontanellato, which was an officers’ camp before being transferred to Sforzesca.

After his escape in Italy, Stanley was helped by Eric Newby’s wife-to-be Wanda Skof.

British travel writer Eric Newby, who during the Second World War served in the Black Watch and Special Boat Section, was captured in August 1942. He escaped from Fontanellato POW camp after the Italian Armistice and was befriended by Wanda Skof, a Slovenian woman living with her family nearby. Eric married Wanda after the war.

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