SOURCES - Roy Cawston's notes

1. The War Diaries of 3rd CLY, 4th CLY and 3rd/4th CLY were trawled for references to the loss of prisoners, particularly where names were mentioned (all too rarely!).

2. The personal knowledge from my years ‘inside’, where Sharpshooters tender to gravitate together and any newcomers would be quickly milked of regimental info.

3. References in letters from home.

4. My own diary material – and memory (while I still have it!).

5. The publication last year (2008) of Prisoners of War: British Army 1939 - 1945 by J.B.Hayward & Son in association with The Imperial War Museum.  This contains alphabetical nominal Registers of over 107,000 British Army Prisoners of all ranks held in Germany and German occupied territories (excluding Italy).  Before this admirable record was published the process of identifying Prisoners of War was laborious and time-consuming as it could only be conducted on an individual basis.

6. Pat (my wife) gave me this expensive volume as a birthday present last year.

7. The circulation by the SYA in 1946* of an alphabetical list of Sharpshooters who, for one reason or another had so far not responded to the Committee’s request for their personal details.  Taken with the nominal rolls of the Association and the information gleaned from items 1to 4 above, I then set about searching PoW:BA 1939-45.

8. The one problem I had (have) with the aforesaid volume is that while Regular regiments such as RTR, 5DG, 10H etc are listed individually, all Yeomanry regiments are listed as RAC.  This puts a premium on the accuracy of the individual data arrived at by Stage 7.