In lists the 2 pow camp sites at Otley, Yorkshire are listed as Camp 164 and 245. I am now reading the book 'Operation Mamba' about the SOE's attempts to recruit Russians who had fought / laboured with the Germans after being captured. In a report from July 1944, a Major Benham went to make an inspection of Russian pows - "...in Camp No. 8 Otley, Yorkshire..." a further report in the book repeats the number 8 for Otley Camp. I am presuming that 'Otley Camp' and 'Weston Lane Camp, Otley' are the same place - but nowhere else have I seen it referred to as Camp 8. (Camp 8 is listed as Warth Mills and then Mile House Shropshire). Does anyone know why this 'number 8' for Otley may have occurred? (A bit late but - Happy New Year to all).
Note sure if this will help Every prisoner of war camp in the UK mapped and listed Every prisoner of war camp in the UK mapped and listed
Thank you both - in those lists it shows Otley (Weston Lane) as Camp 164/245. That it my problem - when visits were made to Otley by a couple of members of SOE and they called it Camp 8.
Weston Lane POW Camp Heritage Gateway - Results https://www.ww2pow.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/164WestonLane.docx Still looking to see if I can find “why” it may have been called Camp 8
Camp numbers were given to the British 'management team' unit sent to the POW camp location to run it, not to the camp location itself. So when the management moved, the number went with them. It's a bit like RAF squadrons having the number but the camp has a name.Therefore camp 180 started at Marbury in Cheshire, moved to Radwinter, then to Trumpington. The destruction of almost all POW camp war diaries [WDs] has made the movement of camp units around the country very difficult to trace. However, I suspect there are more sources of information buried in the TNA War Office and Foreign Office files than any of us have yet mined, so there is a bit of hope left. Because of the WD destruction, the Historic England list compiled by Roger Thomas is incomplete. Some camps are missing entirely from it. This is not his fault. I believe was working to a timeline and budget. What he did do was give us all a basis from which to work. Photographs of hostel gateways sometimes carry the number of the parent main camp and that can mislead you as to camp/hostel status. Some camps had 15-20 attached hostels. Even more confusingly, at times a camp can be called by its army selected name, but on occasions, the name the locals had for it was used, depending on who wrote the document you happen to be looking at. Documents written at regional command HQ's / memoirs written much later I find sometimes loosely describe camp locations because the writer has never been near them/ can't remember and just picks the nearest town or village name. That can lead to the kind of confusion that evoked initial question of this thread. One thing you can do to find a location is use the first post war OS 6 inch map you can find to pin down sites by the military hut layouts you can find in the area of interest.
