• Casualty list, 4th Bn. The Dorsetshire Regiment, Operation Market Garden

Date of birth:

October 23rd, 1922 (Easton in Gordano/Somerset, England)

Date of death:

September 1994 (Abbots Leigh/Somerset, England)

Service number:

5734959

Nationality:

British (1801-present, Kingdom)

Rank during Operation Market Garden:
(Acting) Lance-Corporal

MISSING 25.9.1944, POW, SURVIVED

Prisoner of War (POW) details:
POW No. 17586
POW Camps:
- Stalag 12A (Limburg s.d. Lahn);
- Stalag 4B (Mühlberg);
- Stalag 4F (Hartmannsdorf-Chemnitz).

John Robert Clarke was born on 23 October 1922 in Markham, Easton-in-Gordano, Somerset. According to the 1939 Register his occupation was probably a shop assistant and he lived on Grove House Bull Lane, Pill, Long Ashton R.D., Somerset.

On 11 December 1941 John enlisted at the Dorsetshire Regiment in Dorchester. He was transferred to Reserve on 2 November 1946 and discharged 21 January 1947.

John was posted to Dorchester, Berkhemstead, Dover Castle, Canterbury, Sturry, Herne Bay, acting as costal defense. Early in 1942 in Sandwich change was made from defensive to offensive training. The Battalion moved from Sandwich to Waldershare Park, Cliftonville, and Bexhill-on-Sea.

John took part in the long Battle for Caen and many Normandy battles, into Belgium and The Netherlands where John went with his regiment. This led to him taking part in operation Market Garden in September 1944.

In order to make the evacuation of the remnants of the 1st Airborne Division possible, the 4th Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment was ordered to cross the Lower-Rhine at the Westerbouwing Heights, just west of Oosterbeek, on the night of 24/25 September 1944. Clarke was reported missing on 25 September 1944 at Oosterbeek and subsequently on 11 January 1945 reported Prisoner of War in German hands.

John described this as a big German soldier came up behind him and put a rifle to his head. He described the soldier as 6ft 6 tall with blond hair. The soldier was in the Herman Goring SS Division. John said he felt that if he had been on his own, he would have been shot but because there was a group of them, they became prisoners. John was initially taken to Stalag 12A (Limburg s.d. Lahn). He had to stay in the clothes he was captured in, and the Germans painted a red triangle on his back and knee.

John was also moved to Stalag 4F (Hartmannsdorf-Chemnitz) where he was made to work with the German Forestry Commission, cutting down pine trees for pit props. He also was moved to work on the Chemnitz railway yards but he said he did more sabotage than work! He was moved to a POW hospital due to ill health and was still in the hospital when the war ended.

He was then transported to Czechoslovakia as he was still not well and sent on a plane home to Swindon, England. He was put on a hospital train and taken to Virginal Water in Surrey. John had to spent time recuperating in Bath and then when well went to Blackpool with 9th Kings Oldham Battalion and later back to Berlin with 1st Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment and worked as a train guard during the Cold War. He worked to help German Nationals settle who were traveling from Russia. On his discharge from Army, he returned home and worked for a builder and then British Rail until he retired.

John Robert Clarke died in September 1994 at Abbots Leigh, Somerset. He is buried with his parents at Church of St. George, Easton-in-Gordano, Somerset. Son of Henry Albert Clarke and Alice Prudence Clarke.

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• - Photo Collection Jo Weston.
  - Casualty Lists - Other Ranks 1578(37), 1652(12), 1759(27)
  - ‘Prisoners of War. Armies and other land forces of the British Empire, 1939-1945’, compiled by J B Hayward
  - 1939 Register
  - England & Wales Deaths 1837-2007
  - Information kindly provided by Jo Weston