| Surname: | Cornforth |
| Initials: | P A |
| Rank: | Lance Corporal |
| Army Number: | 2308452 |
| Notes: | CMP. Enlisted in the Royal Corps of Signals, transferred to CMP. Casualty List 280. BEF France, Missing, 13/6/40. Casualty List 332. France, POW (previously reported Missing on List 280). Casualty List 1105. Corrections, List 332. BEF, France, POW (previously reported as missing) on List 280, 13/6/40, rank should read Pte. Casualty List 1471 POW, reported POW in German hands now repatriated, previous list 332 (corrected by 1105), France. 3/8/44 Discharged. He is not listed in British Army, Prisoners of War, 1939 - 1945. Percy Arnold Cornforth. Extract from the Portsmouth Evening News, 31/5/44. CALLED TO DEAD MEN. A soldier who called to some dead men on the beach at St Valery to save him from drowning more than four years ago arrived home from a German prison camp yesterday. He was L/Cpl Percy Cornforth (43) ex AA road patrol of the Corps of Military Police, living at Rose Cottage, West Hill, Alresford, Hants. An evening news reporter drove him from Alton to Alresford yesterday afternoon after his wife had been to Winchester expecting him to arrive there. As the car entered the town all Cornforth said was "It's nice to be back in the old town," and an hour later he was telling me "I can hardly believe I'm home, I keep looking around to see if there are any German guards at my heels." He told me his story. A gun shot wound in the right hip bowled him over on the beach at St. Valerie on June 10, 1940. "I must have gone off for a bit" he said " and when I came too the tide was rising and sweeping over me and I couldn't budge an inch. I say men leaning against the breakwater. I shouted appeals to them to save me. I got no answer. Then I realized they were all dead. It was a French soldier that saved me from drowning." No praise is high enough for the Red Cross I can say quite honestly that if it were not for the parcels they sent, thousands of our prisoners could not possibly survive on the food the Germans give. |
Prisoner of War Record: | |
| Imprisonment: | Not Known GERMANY 🇩🇪 |