Family Members, World War 2, Etcetera...

Edrof

Edrof

Edrof

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After some internetting I (unexpectedly) found this online today:


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That's my grandpa. He's in the Monte Cassino War Cemetary in Italy. I started poking about Google and that battle was particularly awful. I watched some tours of the Cemetary on YT and I nearly had to start chopping some onions at my PC to hide the welling-up! :(

I've looked into his service history and could blather on for pages. It's fascinating to research, although I've rather hit a full stop. I really should get my behind over to visit him some day and I really should have talked to my nan about him when she was alive.

Surely everyone here has (or had) a father, grandfather or great-grandfather who were involved in the Second World War. Do you know much about them? Any interesting stories or objects that they left behind?
 
Please feel free to blather on. Its fascinating to read about that stuff and its important people learn about it.

My own grandfather was a medic in the army. He served in India and Burma. Didnt like to talk about his experiences much which was a great shame. He did teach me the origin of 'going doolally' and that it was the name of a transit camp in india that was so boring it was said to make men insane.


Know even less about what my Gran did but she was air force. My other grandfather was in the merchant marine.
 
All I know about my grandparents involvement in the war, was that on one side my grandfather was a rear gunner flying lancasters, that he was shot down in and spent some time in a PoW camp, and that at some point he was awarded the DFM for doing something that was probably pretty stupid.

My other grandfather (now deceased) was involved in the Normandy Landings, but I don't know much more than that. Rather wish I'd listened more when I was young.
 
one grandad was an army cook in N Africa was around all the action but not "directly" in the line of fire.

other i have been told, he died when i was young, injured himself/broken leg? whilst training for a parachute jump. (would love to find the truth of this)

Nans both worked in woolwich arsenal (Royal Arsenal) in wartime
 
I've got a relative buried in a Hong Kong war cemetery.

Can't remember off hand who it was or which cemetery, I'll have to check my ancestry account where all the details are.
 
My great uncle fought in North Africa, took part in the landings in Sicily, then one of the first in during the D-day landings because of his units previous experience in Sicily. Was seriously injured at Caen by a 8.8cm shell apparently, still carries shrapnel from it. Never talked about his experiences until his last few years.

My great granda left home at 16 to join the army and ended up in India in what's now Kashmir as a stable boy for a cavalry unit due to growing up on a farm I believe. Then when the Boer war started he was posted to South Africa before ending up in the Siege of Ladysmith where he was mentioned in Dispatches and met Kitchener. Was declared medically unfit for service after developing malaria at some point after that and returned home for the first time in something like 6 years I think it was. Was then drafted back into the army in WWI as part of an engineering squad digging trenches and fortifications in his early 40s.

One of my grandads worked in a shipyard in WWII so wasn't called up to serve, not sure on my other grandad, he died in the 1950s so I think he was too old to serve in WWII. A distant relative was a radio op in the Dambusters raid.
 
My Grandfather swanned around Italy, looked after PoWs and as far as I could tell from his house he looted the country.
 
I have a boring family, only one good story, but it is good!

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My great-grandad was a wing commander in WWII, he got shot down and taken to Stalag Luft III, which i'm told was the most secure camp the Germans had (and coincidentally where the great escape took place later in the war) He then helped his friends escape by building a wooden vaulting horse and they used it disguise a tunnel being dug out of the camp and his friends escaped! (He didn't of course, but eventually was released at the end of the war)

There was even a book written by one of the guys that escaped (The Wooden Horse) and it was made into a film!

Really wish I could have met him, but he died 4 years before I was born...
 
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One of my great grandads worked on the docs in Newcastle repairing ships another was in the merchant navy.
 
My grandfather was one of the last to leave the beach at Dunkirk, invalidated out of the army soon afterwards due to wounds he received while defending the beach. My great-uncle (who I was named after) was KIA in the liberation of Antwerp, jumped on a grenade to save the rest of his squad.
 
One grandfather was just too young, so spent time in the RAF doing mechanics etc, the other was a farmer, so a reserved occupation - he served as a fireman during the war.

Great grandparents fought in either ww1 or ww2; didn't know them, but really should find out more tbh.
 
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bigjohnsonrichard said:
is that ancestry site worth it?
Click to expand...

One thing I would add about searching your family history is that you very often have to obtain birth, marriage & death certificates to ensure you are tracing the correct people and this is costly.

Used to be £7 or £8 per certificate and I ordered dozens of them.

It does make a nice keepsake though as I've got them with the printed off tree and newspaper accounts in 6 large folders to hand down to my daughter.
 
My grandfather was from a polish family living in Russia at the start of the second world war, they were huge land owners (forestry). However the lands were seized and I believe his parents were taken to concentration camps, he and his brother escaped and were separated one night when they fled from gunfire and never saw each other again.

He ended up in the UK as a translator in Scotland (spoke multiple languages including German) during WW2 and thats about as much as we can get out of him, he is extremely secretive about it all and is paranoid the Nazis are still out there looking for people. Quite a tale, so unfortunately that's as far as my family tree goes back on my fathers side, I don't really know how to find out anything else about it.

My other grandfather was only a teen during the second world war, near the end though he served in the occupation of Germany, had some pretty awesome stories but sadly died a few years ago.
 
My grandfather, although I never met him as he died shortly before I was born, served in North Africa as an artillery spotter for 25 pounders. He then went in to Gold Beach on D+1 and served throughout the Normandy campaign up until Market Garden where he following in with the armoured columns up to Nijmegen. It was here where he got injured, not through fighting, but he was in the back of a truck when it hit a mine. The truck over turned and he broke his back. He spent the next 6-8 months in hospital in England.

My dads uncle spent his time in the Royal Navy. He was initially based on the HMS Curacoa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Curacoa_(D41)

He was on it when it got cut in half by the Queen Mary. At the time he was just about to get a bath when the incident happened, he ended up having to climb through a really small opening at the base of one of the funnels. He then spent many hours in the water until he was rescued (I can't recall how).

From that day onwards, and get this for irony, he was a very keen swimmer! He had two daughters and I visited one of them a few years ago and they were telling me that for the rest of his life he was always looking for an opportunity to go swimming wherever he went. He went to Brighton with them and she fondly recalls watching him as he swam "miles" out to see wearing just shorts at the age of 75!

After the Curacoa, he was based on minsweepers, up until the Normandy invasion where he drove the landing craft, not on D-day, but for a long time after that.
 
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My Grandfather joined the RAF in WWII as a Woodwork Technician, he made friends with some SNCO Aircrew and re-traded to Sgt Aircrew Gunner and saw out the last 2 years of the war flying in Vickers Wellingtons, after the war he re-traded again to Air Radio Operator and spent the years after the war flying in small Auster aircraft, spotting Artillery and controlling Army movements from the sky over Germany for the war games the allied nations had in the country.

He didn't tell me any of this until I told him I was about to have my final interview for joining the Navy as an Aircraft Technician in 2009. I changed to the RAF after hearing his stories and seeing his photographs, glad I did in the end. :)
 
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