The Tank Museum is launching an appeal to find a photograph of Second Lieutenant Kenneth Harold Ashcroft.
Kenneth Ashcroft was studying to become a motor engineer when the First World War broke out. He sailed to France in August 1914 with the Army Service Corps as one of the first members of the British Expeditionary Force, involved in the retreat from Mons and the subsequent fighting on the Marne. He returned to Britain for a period before receiving his commission with the Tank Corps on the 27th June 1917.
Kenneth was captured at Cambrai on the 29th November 1917 and taken to Camp Saarbrucken in Germany as a Prisoner of War. Included with the donation of Kenneth’s medals to the Tank Museum was a letter written to Kenneth’s mother on the 7th June 1918. It was sent by an H J Bristow, whose son, Private H Austen Bristow was also a POW at the camp.
The letter writes of Kenneth’s ‘self-sacrificing kindness…we feel that through God’s good Providence, your son’s kindness to our dear boy went far to restore him to us. He is our only son… Austen tells us that, although himself wounded, Lieutenant Ashcroft often delayed his own meals to feed him, and was waiting to greet him with cheery words when returning to consciousness after his operations. Nothing that we can say or anything that we were able to do can repay such kindness as this.’
Kenneth returned to England as a repatriated POW in December 1918. The following year, he married Daisy Martin and completed his pre-war aspirations of becoming a motor engineer. The couple eventually moved to Christchurch, where Kenneth served as Mayor between 1952 and 1955. He remained there until his death in 1974.
If you can help us tell Kenneth’s story, please contact archive@tankmuseum.org
