POWs
Apart from the 3 officers and 17 other ranks who escaped St Valery and made it safely to England, all living 1st Lothians at St Valery were taken prisoner of war, along with most of the 51st Highland Division.
Where the POW camp is known, it is recorded against the Lothians' name in the website page about the men of the 1st Lothians.
Note that most genealogy sites now hold the POW lists and these lists are therefore more accessible. There are some problems with the lists: (a) not all men are recorded as being a POW; it all depended on the men being at the camp where the Red Cross were recording information; (b) some of the information is incomplete, as the soldiers were moved around a fair amount depending on inter alia the political situation (e.g. from Italy to Germany in 1943) and they were also moved from work camp to work camp at the whim of their captors.
Most of the men who were captured at the time (that is, who had not escaped and were captured later) experienced the same journey to the prisoner-of-war camps in Germany and Poland. Injured men had various experiences depending on their injuries.
Several injured men were laid in the church in St Valery, then transported to the church in Forges les Eaux and finally moved to the hospital at Forges les Eaux.
Below is a postcard written from an injured 1st Lothian from Forges les Eaux to his family in Scotland.
Forges les Eaux postcard 1940
There are a number of Lothians-specific photos on the photos page of this website. Other photos of life as a POW are included below.
Red Cross Parcels arriving at Stalag 8b