Douglas Brock Peterkin
11th Light Field Ambulance.
Whilst serving with the 11th Light Field Ambulance the Douglas Brock Peterkin had the dubious privilege of working in the huts of Belsen Camp from the day of liberation onwards until the last hut was burned down by the British after complete evacuation of the camp. Few people who worked there can at any time have seen a greater wealth of clinical material. The death rate whilst evacuation was proceeding between April 20th, 1945 and May 17th, 1945, numbered some thirteen thousand in Camp 1 alone.
When Douglas Brock Peterkin was born on 14 June 1914, in Inverness-shire, Scotland, United Kingdom, his father, Gilbert William Peterkin, was 33 and his mother, Catherine Burgher, was 35. He registered for military service in 1940.
Belsen doctor, 94, dies.
Douglas Brock Peterkin, of Dawlish, Devon, one of the first Allied doctors to enter the liberated Belsen Nazi concentration camp in 1945, has died aged 94. He helped a fellow officer transfer 7,000 detainees into ambulances before contracting typhus.
The Guardian, July 2008
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Belsen Online Archive
This archive has been established after my own relative, Reg Price, took part in the liberation and subsequent humanitarian effort of Bergen Belsen in April 1945. Reg produced this famous sign at Belsen. As part of the 113th DLI, Reg and his comrades were at Belsen for 5 weeks and left when the last hut was empty and ceremonially burnt down. This archive compiles all available resources to build a lasting tribute to all the men and women who helped - any unit, any nationality. If you have a relative, or any info, on the relief effort at Belsen, we’d love you to please get in touch. Email us: liberator@belsen.co.uk – Thank you Nick Price Creatives • Facebook • Twitter •
