After their ordeal in Russia, the last British Army prisoners-of-war to return from World War I held a reunion dinner at the Café Royal in Piccadilly. Unfortunately, not every member of the group had remained in London, but those that did attend, signed the back of a photograph that had been taken on board HMS Delhi.
The signatures that are in the image below were my starting point for the research that went into Churchill’s Abandoned Prisoners. I found it extraordinary what these men achieved in later life, but did not have space in the book to cover this aspect of the story. In January 2024, I will describe what I have discovered from various sources including university archives and verbal testimony, beginning on New Year’s Day with Lieutenant General Sir Brian Horrocks, whose signature in in the bottom left of the photograph.
Rupert Wieloch 