Now indexed on the UK National Archives Discovery catalogue are personnel cards from 417 boxes in the series WO 416 — War Office: German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War.
Roger Kershaw’s blog post on the completion of the project mentions, “Of the 185,000 opened records, 100,000 relate to British Army personnel, 5,200 to Australian forces, 2,800 to New Zealand forces, and 4,600 to South African forces.”
No Canadians? Yes, there are. Search Canad* and find 4,494 hits. I searched for a Canadian Reid as an example.
It turns out Stanleigh Lowry Reid was from Ottawa, son of Irish-born Frank and Ellen Lowry Reid. The entry shows he died so there are entries in records from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Canadian Virtual War Memorial and a service file.
Hoping to find some record of my late husband Ed’s half brother, Basil, who was taken as a POW at Singapore, and being dark skinned, he was able to escape beyond the POW Camps. Eventually he was transported to a Vichy French controlled east Asian country, now Vietnam, and escaped from there through China and back to the UK. Cheers, BT
I found a distant cousin in this record set…he spent most of the war (captured in June 1940) in a POW camp…