The Vanishing Doctor Trick?
WX12725 Charles J. Webb
Private CJ. Webb seems the most unlikely of war heroes. He starts off his war being sick for 3 months in a hospital with flu (influenza).
Charles’ period of sickness in hospital runs from June 1941 to August 1941. Imagine if you phoned in sick for work and stayed away for 3 months with the flu. Even film stars in that era only took about 1 month sick leave with flu. But private Webb did have a deathly chalky-white appearance. You wonder what his day job was — sat in an office with no sunshine? The moles on his skin suggest he was highly sensitive to the sun. Yet supposedly a laborer.
Then out of kindness the army after 3 months in a hospital bed decide to give him 10 days extra paid leave. If you look at the record of other soldiers on the NAA.gov.au site they might get two days unpaid leave to get married.
By September 1942 he’d rejoined his unit at an AIF (ME) staging camp and within 14 days he was missing in action in Italy. Lucky Charlie’s luck seems to have run out. Until we find out he was a Prisoner of War (POW) in an internment camp in Northern Italy. It is never explained where he was for 9 months in between his leave from October 1941 and rejoining his unit at the end of July 1942.
Charles J. Webb was known to be a POW in Italy back in September 1942. Yet the records show that ‘officially’ it was November 1942. It is amazing that newspaper journalists knew before the military records department about C.J. Webb’s location.
We can see from the Red Cross he was in a camp near the Lombardy Plains.
We can also see Gunner RL Gill was in that same camp as well a year later in 1943.
Fortunately for him, Gunner Gill escapes from the Lombardy camp and by 1945 was back home in Australia.
What is unusual from our TV view of war reality is Switzerland interned Gunner Gill in a camp until the war was over. In war films we see POWs escape to Switzerland and are back home within days. In Switzerland, camps such as Adelboden or Davos were used for prisoners and Camp Wauwilermoos was used for more difficult prisoners under much harsher conditions. It is unlikely there was a camp in St Gallen but it may not be impossible.
But Charlie J. Webb was not as resourceful as Gunner Gill and ended up in Stalag 8B in Germany as POW no 33661.
This shows Charles J. Webb was registered as a German prisoner of war on 27/7/1942 whereas his records (we can see on NAA.gov.au) were not aware until 10/12/1943.
Stalag VIII-B was a German Army prisoner-of-war camp during World War II1. It was later renumbered as Stalag-3441. The camp was located near the village of Lamsdorf, which is now known as Łambinowice, in Silesia. The coordinates for the camp are 50.561456°N latitude and 17.584125°E longitude. The camp initially occupied barracks built to house British and French prisoners in World War I. During World War II, it housed approximately 100,000 prisoners from various countries including Australia, Belgium, British India, British Palestine, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, the United States, and Yugoslavia. In 1943, the Lamsdorf camp was split up, and many of the prisoners were transferred to two new base camps, Stalag VIII-C Sagan (modern Żagań) and Stalag VIII-D Teschen (modern Český Těšín). The base camp at Lamsdorf was renumbered Stalag 3441. The Soviet Army reached the camp on the 17th March 1945.
Charlie Webb was lucky to survive the changes in POW camps and arrived in Liverpool in May 1945. Some soldiers with practical skills were allowed to work ‘unpaid’ in German villages such as fixing shoes as a cobbler or repairing taps as a plumber. It would be easy to imagine some may have even returned to Germany after WW2 if they had developed relationships with local people who gave them food.
In 1952 a list of soldiers who could apply for financial assistance was put in a newspaper. Charles J. Webb did apply.
We learn from that application that Charles J. Webb was married to Doris Maud Webb.
It all makes sense that he returned home after WW2 and applied for funds except he had only effectively soldiered for 14 days before being captured and we have no record where he was for the 9 months before he returned to duty. How C.J. Webb with the same number WX 12725 could be in a German POW camp on the 27/7/1942 is never explained — just 2 days after he rejoined his unit and was then a POW in Italy.
Facial ID matches
But then if we look at these images below we can see someone who had the same facial structure as Charles J. Webb. Facial ID suggests that person was Dr Cecil Neville Raphael. The soldier Charles J. Webb looks like a soldier in an old silent movie in his portrait picture with a chalky white face. Raphael’s best friend was former silent movie theatre owner Jim Thornley. C.J. Webb’s digital NAA.gov.au file picture can’t be accessed but it should look exactly like the image at the start of this article. Vague negative images in his NAA.go.au file show what looks like a man and woman. It is hard to determine why they are there.
In the following images below, the body on the right has been ‘suggested’ by Somerton Man researcher (Mr P. Bowles) to be the original pictures of the Somerton Man (Charles Webb) but he may believe the body was swapped in the morgue. Who knows whether that was true or the product of an over-active imagination. But it provides an image of a body ‘from some unknown source’ in 1948. It may be the body of C.J. Webb or his look-alike Dr C.N. Raphael.
We can see Dr. C.N. Raphael also had what looks like facial moles suggesting sensitivity to sun like Charles J. Webb.
Dr Cecil Neville Raphael who looked like Charles J. Webb died June 1948 at age 44 and was cremated with a simple grave marker. He had previously been the wealthy owner of some 20 racehorses and many were top-class winners at Australian racing events. Whereas, the Somerton Man who was the 43-year-old electrician Charles Webb (who died at the end of November 1948) was buried with an expensive grave paid for by bookmakers.
Two of Dr Raphael’s horses:
Glenfino:
Madame Coue:
It is interesting that when Charles J. Webb was in hospital with flu for 3 months Cecil Neville Raphael was ending his medical practice partnership with Percy Bartak after suffering from malaria for 3 weeks.
It is also interesting that the ownership was being referred to as Mrs & Mrs Raphael implying she was attending the races.
One unanswered question is whether Dr C.N. Raphael appeared as C.J. Webb in Italy during WW2 and deliberately got caught within 14 days so he could observe the war inside POW camps? Was Dr Raphael an unsung war hero?
In 1935 we can observe Dr Cecil Raphael was involved in military manoeuvres in the UK, perhaps as a medic, and he then returned to Australia:
In May 1945, C.J. Webb was released from the camp in Germany. The next we hear of the doctor was in August 1945 he was treating his daughter Marcia with penicillin who was critically ill. It was his 24x7 dosing regime that helped her recover.
There was an indication Dr. Raphael was around in May 1945 but it was a telegram.
In 1948 Dr C.N. Raphael suffered home robberies — just before he died:
and:
Then he died aged 44 in June 1948.
He was then cremated. This gets us back to this body some say was the original Somerton Man in November 1948 whose body was swapped in the morgue?
In 2022 Professor Abbott proved with DNA that the Somerton Man was Carl/Charles Webb and not Charles John Webb who may have been Dr C.N. Raphael’s war-time secret identity. Dr Raphael was mysteriously dead aged 44 in June 1948 and not aged 43 in November 1948 like Carl/Charles Webb. The wealthy man with the racehorses had a simple grave marker whereas the unknown man on the beach had an expensive grave funded by the Bookmakers League.
The face of C.J. Webb in Germany is different to the one in the newspaper. One is an older man like C.N. Raphael. Two C.J .Webb’s with the same number WX 12725. One who was registered as a POW in Germany just 2 days after his return to his unit in Italy in July 1942 and becoming a POW in Italy.
But now here is a strange match:
This person ? was in a Swinburne Technical school photo. Carl Webb was also in a Swinburne Technical College. It could be that this young man was a doppelganger of Carl Webb. Both ? and younger Carl Webb in the same school.
I had imagined ? could have been Dr Raphael. This new thread is being explored.
