Andries Johannes Stephanus Bekker

WWII

Western Desert, North African Campaign, South African 2nd Infantry Division

• 1940/05/29 Enlisted
• 1940/07/22 Assumed duty - Company A, 2nd Battalion, Witwatersrand Rifles - Rank: Rifleman, Service number 82210
• 1941/11/06 Date on strength (active service)
• 1941/12/18 Disembarked at Suez
• 1942/01/24 Posted to the 97d Battery, 3rd Field Regiment SAA - Rank: Gunner
• 1942/03/30 Discharged from hospital (indicating he was wounded in early 1942)
• 1942/04/7-12 Granted local leave
• 1942/06/20 Added to the missing list / Captured at Tobruk
• 1942/11/30 Confirmed POW - Italy and later Germany (detail provided below).
• 1945/05/27 Released POW
• 1945/08/03 Returned to South Africa
• 1945/11/06 Discharged as part of partial demobilisation

Prisoner of War

The South African, British and other Commonwealth units captured at Tobruk, Libya were forced to march across the desert to an Italian POW camp. AJS Bekker was transported to a transit camp in Italy and then held in Germany. Oral history recalls one escape and recapture in Italy and the same in Germany. No records have been traced to date to confirm these.

AJS Bekker POW #: 274454, 1942/06/20 to 1945/05/27

• Italy

65 Italian P.O.W Camp Gravina Altamura (nr. Taranto) near Bari, in Apulia Southern Italie. This camp was built in 1942 and consisted of 36 barracks. Almost 9000 commonwealth’s soldiers captured in North Africa (including Tobruk) were held here between April 1942 and May 1943, in the biggest Italian POW camp during WWII.

• Germany

Stalag IV-G was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp (Stammlager) for NCOs and enlisted men. It was not a camp in the usual sense, but a series of Arbeitslager ("Work Camps") scattered throughout the state of Saxony, administered from a central office on Lutherstraße in Oschatz, a small town situated between Leipzig and Dresden.

It is not known in which work camp AJS Bekker was placed but the following two camps were known to include South Africans.

Working Detachment No.255, Markranstädt
183 South African POWs. At the time of a Red Cross inspection 50 men worked for the sugar factory. They do 8-9 hours daily. The rest are employed by the Town Council of Leipzig. They work 8 hours a day but due to the transport difficulties are actually 13 hours away from the camp each day. There is no Sunday work for either party.

Working Detachment No.271, Leipzig West
89 British POWs, including 9 Cypriots. They work 9 hours a day for the gas-work. No Sunday work. Mail from South Africa is reported to be very slow at the moment.

Decorations

• 1939-45 Star
• Africa Star
• The War Medal (1938-45)
• Africa Service Medal

Grave