Briton missing behind the Iron Curtain?

Discussion in 'Postwar' started by alieneyes, Aug 29, 2011.

  1. alieneyes

    alieneyes Senior Member

    While reading "America's Secret Army - the Untold Story of the Counter Intelligence Corps" I came across the attached page, which has piqued my curiousity.

    Grateful for any assistance in shedding light as to what happened to "this unfortunate Englishman"
     

    Attached Files:

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  2. Rav4

    Rav4 Senior Member

    The Russians snatched thousands of Russian citizens off the streets of German cities as the result of the agreement between Truman, Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta conference. Many, if not most, were either shot or sent to the Gulag.
     
  3. Jedburgh22

    Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member

    Solzhenitsin mentions seeing a British officer in Battledress in his history of the Gulag, and Nigel Cawthorne in his book The Iron Cage covers the topic in detail. The SOE Freston Mission were given a hard time by the NKVD when they were overran in Poland - and the fate of many soldiers from what was to become the Eastern bloc, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc who returned from UK at the end of WWII is a story still waiting to be researched.
     
  4. Tab

    Tab Senior Member

    I did read the there were a large number of Americans that had fallen into Russian hands and when America refused to pay for their release they were never seen again.
     
  5. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    Very interesting. Tempted to have a dig around to see if anything can be discovered about the fate of leslie Golding.

    Lee
     
  6. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

  7. wtid45

    wtid45 Very Senior Member

    Could he be the same (Captain) Leslie Golding
    with 13/Bn Para's during the late war?

    13th Battalion The Parachute Regiment: Luard's Own
    Being as I cant find a record of him as missing or killed in the CWGC register, apart from the name what makes you think it may be the guy mentioned by Lee.
     
  8. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    IIRC Micael Haydock, in his "City Under Siege" about the Berlin Airlift, notes that there were a handful of attempts to kidnap British personnel (including WRAFS) across into the Soviet Zone in the weeks after the Western Allies arrived in the city to administer their Occupation Zones....
     
  9. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    There's also the strange case of Otto John, head of the West German domestic intelligence service. In the 1950's he disappeared and turned up on East German radio saying that he had deserted to the East. But after managing to get back to the West he claimed that he had actually been abducted.

    ATD interesting find, could be the same guy.

    Wtid45 perhaps he later managed to get back to the west?


    OK I'm going to start some digging now :)



    Lee
     
  10. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    Being as I cant find a record of him as missing or killed in the CWGC register, apart from the name what makes you think it may be the guy mentioned by Lee.

    Simply just the name. Not a great way to research, but a start.
    Fairly unusual name, although I did find another Leslie Golding,
    on this forum, as a member of Recce with a CWGC grave. I wondered
    that if he was demobbed in Germany (did that ever happen?) then he
    wouldnt be posted as 'missing' as such especially as the incident happened
    in '47. Pure speculation on my part I agree. As Lee says, worth further research
     
  11. Oldman

    Oldman Very Senior Member

    If you read Tucks biography Fly for Your Life, there is a passage that refers to the time he has been released from the POW camp and is in Russia.
    This where he comes accross an englishman directing traffic who was RA and was living in Russia, it also went on to say the person was actually listed as dead on his local war memorial
     
  12. Jedburgh22

    Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member

    A lot of Brits were working on the Control Commission etc in the 40s and 50s when the Cold War was very much a 'dirty' war that needs it carpets lifted and stories told.
     
  13. alieneyes

    alieneyes Senior Member

    Could he be the same (Captain) Leslie Golding
    with 13/Bn Para's during the late war?

    13th Battalion The Parachute Regiment: Luard's Own

    I am pretty sure it is not the same fellow. I wrote Major Ellis "Dixie" Dean, the author of the piece of Luard's Own, and he advised me that Captain Leslie Golding, a solicitor before the war, went to work at New Scotland Yard post war and attended all informal post war 13th Battalion reunions until 1955. From the early 60s until 2003 formal all ranks reunions were held and Golding did not attend any of them.
     
  14. alieneyes

    alieneyes Senior Member

    Nigel Cawthorne in his book The Iron Cage covers the topic in detail.

    Unfortunately, Cawthorne hit a brick wall with the MoD when researching his book. He states in the book that the majority of information in his book came from information held in US archives.

    There are several accounts of UK soldiers in the Gulag held in the Operation Wringer accounts. Wringer was a debrief of all German and Japanese soldiers who came out of the Gulag in the mid 50s.

    There are also several accounts of cities in East Germany where British, American, French and other deserters were given shelter. Home addresses are given and I've often wondered if some of the men went home when the wall came down.
     
  15. DaveB

    DaveB Very Senior Member

    Not much to add to the discussion, if he had gone missing permanently then you would assume that someone would have cared and it would show up somewhere on the internet with a bit of searching.

    If he was detained and released once again you would think that it would make the newspapers or somesuch. I just had a trawl through the Australian newspapers available online without any joy, I was hoping for a good news story on “British bloke released after being detained in Soviet prison camp”. Shot in the dark and it failed....


    To throw in a Red Herring (ha ha) here is an article about a guy called Peter Cundall that does a TV show on gardening here in Australia and his escapades post-war:
     

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  16. alieneyes

    alieneyes Senior Member

    Not much to add to the discussion, if he had gone missing permanently then you would assume that someone would have cared and it would show up somewhere on the internet with a bit of searching.

    I'm not sure I would agree with you on that, Dave. I am reminded of the case of Richard Fecteau and John Downey, two CIA officers who were captured after being shot down over the Peoples Republic of China in the early 50s. Both were held for over 20 years without the knowledge of the US public. One can only imagine that there were UK/Commonwealth intelligence people in the same boat:

    The lost 20 years of CIA spies caught in China trap - Times Online

    For all the public Greville Wynne/ "Gordon Lonsdale" or Gary Powers/Rudolf Abel spy swaps at the Glienicke Bridge, one can only wonder how many exchanges were not advertised in the UK press, courtesy of a D Notice.

    I would tend to agree with Jedburgh22's comments about carpets being lifted.
     
  17. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    I am pretty sure it is not the same fellow.

    Nice to know!

    What about the German archive's, have they turned up anything?
     
  18. alieneyes

    alieneyes Senior Member

    Nice to know!

    What about the German archive's, have they turned up anything?

    Not really looked at the German angle yet, AHD. I was hoping one of the genealogical sleuths on here could tell me if a Leslie Golding lived at 4 Westbury Road, South Church, Southend on Sea, UK in the mid 1940s.

    The surname of the girl "our" Leslie Golding was allegedly visiting was "Kuenz". There is currently nobody with that spelling in Eberswalde. There are two spelled "Kunz" which may have some connection. Eberswalde is 50+ kms NE of Berlin, so our fellow was taking an extreme risk in going behind Soviet lines in 1947.
     
  19. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    Turning out to be a nice mystery.

    There were also soviet military bases in Eberswalde in '47.
    They were probably everywhere though ;) HQ of 4th Guards
    Tank Army were stationed there from '45 also became an
    important air base (I guess you know all this!)


    I was wondering if the former East German archives
    would hold it, seeing as they have been 'opened' as
    such, or whether it would have been a Soviet thing.
    Have the Russian's truly opened their archives, after
    the Wall came down or are they as cagey as ever?

    11 people, surname Golding, still living in Southend,
    according to Linkedin, majority working in finance.
    Golding - Southend on Sea, United Kingdom

    Long shots of course, but some hit occasionally


    Would you reckon the October date in his
    scratch cell calendar to be release date
    after his arrest in June? A bit kind of them
    to let him finish his graffiti, if so!
     
  20. Vitesse

    Vitesse Senior Member

    I am pretty sure it is not the same fellow. I wrote Major Ellis "Dixie" Dean, the author of the piece of Luard's Own, and he advised me that Captain Leslie Golding, a solicitor before the war, went to work at New Scotland Yard post war and attended all informal post war 13th Battalion reunions until 1955. From the early 60s until 2003 formal all ranks reunions were held and Golding did not attend any of them.
    Well, just to throw a spanner in the works, I came across this firm of solicitors:

    Seax - Catalogue: D/DS 266 GREGSON AND GOLDING, SOLICITORS, OF SOUTHEND

    Whichever Golding that was, he seems to have become a partner in 1938, so perhaps that's Leslie the solicitor? A KD Golding was also prominent in Southend yacht racing circles in the late 1930s. Golding's not that common a surname: the newest Kelly's Directory I could find online was 1914 - at that time there were apparently no Goldings in Southend and only about 45 in the whole of Essex, but it's by no means complete.

    OTOH what would the odds be on there being two Leslie Goldings in the same town?
     

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