Family History

When my first son, Charlie, was born in 2007, I had an urge to do some family history research and this is how I uncovered the two stories of my grandfathers in World War II and also created a detailed family tree at Ancestry.com. I was able to trace the male line of my family back several hundred years in the village of Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire and female line to Fife and Glasgow in Scotland.

I was born in South Africa, as were my parents, but both my grandfathers were from UK heritage. My paternal grandfather Fred Cripps was English and born in Buckinghamshire. My maternal grandfather, Tom Leith (Pop to me) was South African born but of Scottish descent. All I had to go on were some family stories supplied by my parents and my grandmothers, and some basic personal information about my grandfathers. Using the internet and making contact with the South African Ministry of Defence and the International Red Cross, I started to piece together their stories.

Both men volunteered for the Union Defence Force, the South African army. They both fought at Tobruk in North Africa, but 6 months apart. Fred was taken prisoner at the battle of Sidi Rezegh on 23rd Nov 1941 and Pop was taken at Gazala on 16^th June 1942. They ended up in the same POW camp, Stalag VIIIB/344 Lamsdorf in southern Poland. Even though their back gardens in Durban, South Africa shared a border, unfortunately they never knew each other. My mum and dad ended up at the same high school, started a relationship as teenagers and eventually I came along just as my father started his national service in the South African army in 1969.