WW2 YOUR DAD/GRANDFATHER

[hank]

My Grandfather who was in the Army was gassed and taken prisoner in WW1 and my Father was a gunner in the RAF in WW2. I don’t know much about their military days, my Father never spoke much about the war, but I know he was stationed on the South coast of England and also at Rimini in Italy.

 

[Rasher]

Does anyone know how to ask about records from the MOD, or if there are any websites with unclassified meterial (or classified for that matter) that can be trawled.

Pity they did not invent the database before the bloody war instead of putting everything on billions of bits of paper.

 

[Goose]

My kids' great-grandfather (their gran apparently used to play with Charles when he was a nipper)

Admiral Sir Maurice James Mansergh KCB CBE (1896 - 1966) was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth.
First officer knighted by Elizabeth after she bacame Queen.

He was made Deputy Chief of Staff and subsequently Chief of Staff to the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief for the Normandy Invasion Expeditionary Force in 1943.

After the War he became Commodore commanding 15th Cruiser Squadron and then, from 1946, he became Naval Secretary.He was appointed Commander of the 3rd Aircraft Carrier Squadron in 1948 (HMS Theseus & HMS Vengeance) and Fifth Sea Lord and Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (Air) in 1949.

His last appointment was as Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth in 1951.

unfortunately this line of the famiy is now part of the ex-wife... however the boys still benefit from the lineage!

 

[Ronno]

My Dad was called up into a Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht as a 16 year old. He was captured as a POW by the Americans at the Battle of the Bulge and spent the rest of the war in various POW camps in the USA. He was used to pick cotton and help on a cattle ranch.

In 1945, when the war ended, he was transferred to a POW camp outside Alyth in Scotland and was soon sent to work at a dairy farm in Blairgowrie. When he was released in 1946, he was kept on by the farmer and he met and married by Mum who lived a few hundred yards from the farm.

My Dad was very fortunate. A boy of the same age from the same small town in Germany was also called up with my dad and he ended up being taken POW by the Russians. He was in a camp in Siberia and didn't get home until the mid 50's. Apparently he was like an old man albeit he was only in his late 20's. My Dad is 84 now so he can rightly be called an old man.

An 18 year old POW

My Dad with other German POWs at Balharrie Camp, Alyth

 

[steveh]

Grandfather was a royal marine, artic convoys and then later the med.

Served on HMS London during the yangtse incident and we have the pictures on return into portsmouth...not an inch of the ship without a hole in it

I'll never be able to understand what he went through, the more I read the more humble I feel. Just wish I could tell him how much I appreciate what all these guys did......total and complete respect for everyone one of the armed forces....be that then or now

 

[(RIP) Mark H]

My Dad was part of the paras involved in the action below, in the pic taken in Athens in Jan 45 after the action (2nd row down 4th in from right) he is still fit and well aged 89

What it dosent say in the report below is that when dropped by dakota at Megara, half the troops were drowned when blown out to sea with full kit on, my dad was one of the Lucky ones or I would`nt be here !



Fact File : British Expedition to Greece

September 1944 to January 1945

Theatre: Mediterranean
Location: Greece
Players: Allies: Force 140 under Lieutenant General Ronald Scobie, including 2nd Brigade, Parachute Regiment and 23rd Armoured Brigade (later reinforced by 4th Indian Division and 4th British Division); Force 120 (Royal Navy). Communist EAM/ELAS forces in Athens.
Outcome: Operation Manna was sent to prevent the Communist EAM/ELAS from seizing power in Greece after the German withdrawal.


'Do not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.' - Winston Churchill to General
Scobie on the uprising in Athens, December 1944

Local resistance to the German occupation of Greece emerged in the form of the communist EAM/ELAS movement and the royalist EDES party. During the winter of 1943-4, civil war broke out between the two groups and the British became alarmed at the prospect of communist rule in Greece after the war.

Following the German withdrawal from Greece in 1944, Churchill arranged for a small British force to accompany the Greek government back home.

In late September 1944, Scobie's Force 140 began landing on the Peloponnese while the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) captured Araxos airfield. Parachute troops were dropped at Megara on 4 October and entered Athens on 14 October. The rest of Force 140 landed soon afterwards.

The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, arrived in Athens on 18 October. However, confrontation with EAM/ELAS loomed. After 15 communist protesters were shot dead, fighting broke out between ELAS and the British on 3 December. Scobie's troops were outnumbered and clinging onto a small section of the city, but once reinforcements arrived they regained the initiative and suppressed the uprising.

On Christmas Eve, Churchill and his foreign secretary Anthony Eden flew to Athens to resolve the situation. A ceasefire was agreed on 11 January and a political settlement reached in February. It was not to last - Greece fought a bitter civil war from 1946-9.

T

I keep an eye on the net for any new info on the above operation my Father was involved in, imagine how pleased I was to find this youtube clip of the actual operation, in there somewhere is my Dad !, he probaly knew some of the faces in the clip, I,ve tried to spot him but cant, but would love to save the clip somehow to show him on my laptop, anyone know a simple way to save the clip, he has no internet or wireless where he lives, could I get onto dvd somehow???
heres the clip.........

<object width="640" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mTeAot_MgeQ?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mTeAot_MgeQ?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="505"></embed></object>

 

[ncpierce]

Does anyone know how to ask about records from the MOD, or if there are any websites with unclassified meterial (or classified for that matter) that can be trawled.

Pity they did not invent the database before the bloody war instead of putting everything on billions of bits of paper.

Access to WW2 records is availble. If you have a bit of a Google search you can find the right forms to download. As far as I know its free for next of kin but if you are note related then I think you have to pay and the will not release as much info. I am just about to get my Nan to apply for copies of my Grandad's war service records.

All the WW1 records (that still exist) are available. If you want anything looking up then drop me a PM augie)

 

[Goose]

but would love to save the clip somehow to show him on my laptop, anyone know a simple way to save the clip, he has no internet or wireless where he lives, could I get onto dvd somehow???
heres the clip........

Get REALPLAYER - install it and check the options for installation, where you can have it embedded into Microsoft Internet Explorer with options to download/save video clips.
Once installed you'll find that when "mousing over" the clip a small silver grey bar will appear on the top right-hand side of the video clip that you can click on - this will then download the file/clip for you!

 

[jonny5859]

anyone know a simple way to save the clip, he has no internet or wireless where he lives, could I get onto dvd somehow???

If you use firefox as your browser there is a free add on for it called DownloadHelper. After install there is an icon beside your address bar, once on a web page that has a video clip on it click on this icon it it saves the video for you.. very easy to use!

 

[jonny5859]

i just downloaded the file and have hosted it on megaupload for you to download if you want, heres the link http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IRF941R0 its in mp4 file type, you can watch it on your pc/laptop or burn to a dvd..

 

[bardicastle]

OMG ....i haven't been on this site for about 6 months and i'm amazed that my thread has been resurrected. It's fantastic to see new blood adding to it, i particularly liked ronno, olbertone and silver fox's input.

ronno as it nice to see the what happened if your on the other side

olbertone my dad was in palistine ( never know he might have known my dad )

silver fox's impressive pic's and doc's

GREAT STUFF

 

[Speckled Jim]

Dad: RAF in WW2. Mainly training hand to hand combat for new recruits. Not sure about any details. I'd sure like to ask him but he passed away 30 years ago.

Mum: RAF in WW2. Communications in the UK, and North Africa - Egypt, Libya and Algeria. (She's now in her late 80's and I'm currently making a series of video interviews with her, reminiscences of her childhood, war years, meeting Dad, etc. I've got a couple of hours of it so far and I'm going to surprise my brother and sister with a copy of it when she eventually passes away. Hopefully not for a few years yet though!)

Grandad: Whatever the WW1 equivalent of ARP Wardens/Special Constables were. He was involved with the shooting down of Zeppelin L33 near Little Wigborough, Essex with hand guns in 1915. As a young man, he was a motorcyclist too. Somewhere I have a picture of him on a belt drive Levis, I'll see if I can dig it out and post it.

 

[gingerbeemer08]

Grandad 1= Wounded at Dunkirk, left for dead, treated and repatriated by the Germans, 6 months memory loss in a UK hospital, arrived at my (very surprised) Grans about 1 year later!
Grandad 2= Artillery observer on D-Day, injured by the Bosch at Aachen whilst taking out a Tiger tank.
Dad= Light infantry, 1959-70. Veteran of Aden and Northern Ireland.
Me= REME Warrent Officer (still), veteran of Bosnia and Afghanistan.
Runs in the family!!

 

[Deleted account 231002001]

My Grandad didn't want to carry a gun or shoot people in WW1, and as he was to study medicine at Uni after the war he volunteered for the medical corp and spent his war in the middle east and later in the trenches of northern france. My aunty who is now in her late 80's said thats where his slight stammer came from.

 

[AJSmith110]

Grandfather was a Captain in East Kent Regiment, served shortly in The Somme and was one of the lucky ones to survive, unharmed.
He then served in Home Guard during WWII.

My father was not old enough to get involved until 1944, when he qualified as navigator on lancasters, serving in 50 Squadron, based at Skellingthorpe, near Lincoln. He flew 22 missions,many into Russia. Survived unharmed and then hardly ever talked about his experiences.

 

[JKW]

Grandad - in 1939 he was working on a pilot boat with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. The story goes that he became one of the few sea-born RAF personnel in the air/sea rescue service serving on a rescue boat. Family oral history has it that his boat was torpedoed off the Mersey Bar on it's way back from picking up survivors from a convoy vessel sunk in the Irish Sea. He pushed a float and an injured man back towards shore for several hours and they were, fortunately, picked up by his mates in one of the other rescue boats.

 

[stephen.stallebrass]

My grandad was a gun layer on HMS Mauritius during Second World War. HMS Mauritius was the Flagship off Sword Beach during the D-Day landings. It was part of Fire Support Squadron D that supported the invasion of Normandy. It was especially pivotal in supporting the British 6th Airborne Division Forces, particularly those at Pegasus Bridge.

These airborne troops later said that without the fire support from the Royal Navy they would probably have been overun and suffered more casualties. So what Without the protection of the eastern flank of the bridgehead German forces would have pushed them back into the sea and Europe wouldn't have been liberated and the war lost... In other words my grandad won ww2 with his accurate gunnery, LOL!

No seriously, like most veterans my grandad rarely talked about what he did in the war, I had to find out by doing my own research and pricing together bits of information and recollections of what he did say from my foggy childhood memory.

My other graded was a Japanese POW. don't know where he. Was captured, probably Singapore. He survived the war but didn't talk of his experience. Sadly he died before I was born and I haven't done any research about his war. The only thing I do know is if my gran cooked rice pudding he would go into some PTSD type rage. I think the rice was the trigger?

Another unknown relative was killed and buried in Gallipoli in WW1...

 

[Tunnel Rat]

At the outbreak of WW2 my grandfather ran off and tried to join the Royal Navy. I say "tried" because as soon as they found out he was a fireman on the Southern Railway he was sent straight back to his former job.
So, although not forces, as far as I'm concerned he and many other thousands of railway workers played a key role during the war.
He joined a railway that served the leafy 1930s suburbs of the South East, taking commuters in to London and day trippers to the coast, and everything was a lovely shade of malachite green.
By 1940, everything was painted matt black, he was spending days, sometimes weeks, away from home hauling stuff all over the country around the clock, with the run up to D-Day seeing railway crews live, eat and sleep on the footplate, and all whilst at the receiving end of some of the Luftwaffe's more determined efforts with no way of shooting back.

 

[Leasouth]

Paternal grandfather was a medic in WW1. Like many he faked his age and was too young when he joined up. He served on the Somme and Ypres, never talked about what he saw, but if a gun appeared on the TV or if he heard gun fire or explosions from the TV he changed channels or turned the TV off right away.
Quite annoying as a youngchild, but the older I grew the more I understood.
If you've not been to the Menin Gate, Ypres, Amien, St Omer and the war graves go. My grandmother has two of her brothers names are on the Menin Gate, its a huge monument covered with 54,389 names of men whose bodies were never found.
Maternal grandfather was a pro Royal Marine who joined up in 1925 time for 22 years, His father marched him in to Stonehouse barracks Plymouth and told the recruiting officer and sergeant that his son was joining the Marines. It was first my Grandfather knew of it as he thought he'd gone with his father to Plymouth to go shopping. He was given no choice but t sign away his life for 22 years
In those days Royal Marines trained under live machine gun fire in Cornwall. Guns were set to fire across the side of the hill with bullets just clearing the hill side by a couple of feet. If you weren't flat on your belly crawling you could get shot! At the local Cornish park the sign on the gate read "No Dogs and No Royal Marines". Royal Marines were considered very dangerous hard men.
Grandfather travelled most of the world, he saw my mother for the first few months of her life and then next when she was 5 in 1937 as his ship had been away all that time! Marines Boxing, Rowing, Swimming and shooting champ and he spent time attached with British secret service when on China Fleet duty. In WW2 he was the Marine sergeant in charge of Winston Churchill's body guard group at the Casablanca Conference. He is on Pathe News Reel film walking behind Churchill so it's not BS. He went down on two ships that were sunk in WW2 and survived (One was the "Bon Adventure"). He also did 7 Russia Convoy trips and not many people survived that many in WW2. After his first trip he refused to go the the Red Army Choir shows that were laid on for the British, they were not aloud to carry their side arms and armed Russian soldiers stood guard at the end of every row of British sailors and marines
Towards the end of his life we found out that he had been in places where the government of the day would never admit that British servicemen went or did whatever they were asked to do. After WW2 there was no counseling services or shrinks and he apparently found it hard to adapt and come to terms with the horror of how he and colleagues had to kill silently on some select raids they were involved in. He mentioned very little of what he had done and his faith and his religion became a big part of his latter life.
My father was a boy in WW2 and then did National Service and I spent 3 of my school years at HMS Mauritius school

 

[Posh Pete]

WW1 included too?



In hospital in Glasgow after being wounded on the Somme when the Sherwood Foresters attacked La Boiselle on July 5th 1916. He captured a machine gun and several prisoners. God knows how but he was given the Military Medal for it. Wounded again in 1918 when he lost most of his left arm. As a lad, I remember him cracking eggs one handed into a frying pan and being amazed that he could do that. He was still a Private in 1918. Must have been just as awkward and thrawn a gobshite as myself!