Anyone have family or relatives who served in WW2?

My granddad was in a reserved trade, he worked at SEI in Silk Street. Always told me that he worked on radar and proximity fuses for bombs. He only saw action as an anti aircraft gunner.
 
@Ghandi's Flip Flops he was in 9th battalion Y&L. His brother fought in North Africa and Italy but don’t know unit, it likely would have been either a West Yorks or a Y&L battalion though.
Dad applied for infantry commission when in Iceland, was Lieutenant by 1942 and part of Slim’s new jungle army.

I saw his picture in a book on Burma and it all started there. Got service records, plus I had his officers service record book and some 14th army stuff, they pretty much matched but best was both gave some very specific dates for events. Taking dates to web searches gives fair amount of detail of events. IWM London has photo and film archives, some on line, and I’m going down to view his unit landing on Arakan coast on film later this month. IWM archives let you do research visits but you have to prebook. IWM have some online archives but most stuff is not digitised yet but their index is, so you know what they have and can request to see it. IWM also have some battalion war diaries, and recorded social history interviews with individuals, not arranged any of that yet. Batallion and regiment records are in national archives, not visited yet, regimental museum likewise.

For work reasons, I had to put the research o hold for the last year. Starting again next month but I found so much even about Iceland that it’s going to be a long job. He changed units from 9Y&L to 2WY when he got regular commission which confuses things from record tracing, plus he never spoke about Burma. One time I asked him what the MC was for, he just said “a bit of hectic night action” and I haven’t got around to the detailed citation, it disappeared along with his trophy Samurai sword!

Your grandad in 6Y&L - where was he from?
 
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My Hungarian Grandad Joseph might've fought against some of your Grandfathers. He was in the Royal Hungarian Army and was part of the Axis fighting alongside the Nazis. He defended Budapest against the Soviets but survived and fled. He settled here after WW2 and was an extraordinary man and told some brilliant but also some harrowing stories. Sorry if it offends anyone by this admission but the Hungarian people didn't have much choice but to join the war or face the consequences of the brutal Nazi regime.
 
http://www.lisburntoday.co.uk/news/...or-war-veteran-tommy-and-his-family-1-6455827

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/ob...ess-92-swam-from-carnage-to-survive-1-7042098

My great uncle on my mother's side, only started to say anything about it in his last few years as he felt that future generations needed to know that it wasn't quite as "glamorous as Hollywood would have you believe.
Tommy always seemed prouder of my medals than his own, despite what he had been through.

My great grandfather enlisted in the Irish Rifles in the Great War despite being then 47, on his way back to the front in the summer of 1918 having been transferred to the Pioneers, his ship was sunk crossing the English Channel, he is listed on the Roll of Honour in Donaghcloney
 
My Dad, from Blackley Village, joined the navy in 43 at 18 and was on anti-aircraft guns/depth charges on HMS Mounsey, a Captain Class Frigate on the North Atlantic and mainly Arctic convoys.

0652402.jpg

He was on it from launch in Boston in Dec 1943 so may well be in that pic... The ship was torpedoed near Murmansk in the Barents Sea as they were leaving Russia.

"On 2 November 1944, Mounsey was escorting Convoy RA-61 in the Barents Sea outbound from the Soviet Union when the German submarine U-295 damaged her with a G7es – known to the Allies as "GNAT" – acoustic torpedo, forcing her to return to the Kola Inlet for temporary repairs. Once those repairs were complete, she departed the Soviet Union with Convoy RA-62 and returned to the United Kingdom for permanent repairs,[2][5] after which she returned to service.


At 2300 hours on 10 May 1945, just after the end of World War II, Mounsey accepted the surrender of the German submarine U-1023, which held the distinction of being the last German submarine to sink an Allied warship during the war, off Land's End. The submarine later made a well-publicised tour of British ports.[2]" Wiki.



He said that 10 men died in that attack and that he hated those Arctic convoys because of the cold and how bleak and frightening it was being stalked by U-Boats.

So he was happy that after that he was transferred to HMS Duke Of York at the beginning of 1945, after it had already sunk The Scharnhorst and which was quite a bit bigger...


01_hms_duke_of_york.jpg



So he saw a fair amount in the Pacific towards the end of the war including being at Nagasaki just days after the H-Bomb, and being on the boat that took his Captain to the signing of the Japanese Surrender on USS Missouri on Sept 2nd 1945.
 
http://www.lisburntoday.co.uk/news/...or-war-veteran-tommy-and-his-family-1-6455827

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/ob...ess-92-swam-from-carnage-to-survive-1-7042098

My great uncle on my mother's side, only started to say anything about it in his last few years as he felt that future generations needed to know that it wasn't quite as "glamorous as Hollywood would have you believe.
Tommy always seemed prouder of my medals than his own, despite what he had been through.

My great grandfather enlisted in the Irish Rifles in the Great War despite being then 47, on his way back to the front in the summer of 1918 having been transferred to the Pioneers, his ship was sunk crossing the English Channel, he is listed on the Roll of Honour in Donaghcloney

Allied Warships
HMS Lapwing (U 62)
Sloop of the Modified Black Swan class
sloop_hms_lapwing.jpg

Photo from Imperial War Museum (IWM), FL-9971

Navy The Royal Navy
Type Sloop
Class Modified Black Swan
Pennant U 62
Built by Scotts Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. (Greenock, Scotland)
Ordered 27 Mar 1941
Laid down 17 Dec 1941
Launched 16 Jul 1943
Commissioned 21 Mar 1944
Lost 20 Mar 1945
Loss position 69° 26'N, 33° 44'E

History
HMS Lapwing (Cdr.(retired) Edward Campbell Hulton, RN,) was torpedoed and sunk off Northern Russia north of Murmansk in position 69º26'N, 33º44'E.
61 survivors, 158 men died.

In the afternoon on 20 March 1945, U-968 attacked the convoy JW-65 and reported a destroyer and a Liberty sunk and another Liberty ship torpedoed. In fact, the sloop HMS Lapwing of the 7th Escort Group and the Liberty ship Thomas Donaldson were sunk. HMS Lapwing was hit amidships at 13:25 and sank 20 minutes later.


Hit by U-boat
Sunk on 20 Mar 1945 by U-968 (Westphalen).

U-boat Attack See our U-boat attack entry for the HMS Lapwing
 
My Grandad was at Dunkirk and told us some stories about it, was nearly caught and managed to get away and back to Blighty. He met my Gran shortly after returning.

A mate of mine is currently in Myanmar visiting places his grandfather was fighting and latterly caught, he was one of the chindits. Everywhere he goes he gives a narrative from his grandfathers diary and it is incredibly moving and humbling reading and looking at the photos.
 
@casserole of nonsense

The national archives have a copying service but its absolutely extortionate, and i wouldn't recommend anyone using it, as they can often quote £200-£500 just for copying one file.

However, if you are short of time or can't get down to Kew yourself there's a few independant researchers i know who will 'copy' them (i.e. take photos of the pages within the file) for a fraction of the price (usually between £10 to £30 depending upon number of pages), and can provide a good service. If you want their details drop me a pm and i'll pass on their details.

The War Diary files that are likely to be of interest to you are as follows:-
WO 166/4758 INFANTRY: 9 York and Lancaster Regiment. 1940 May, 1941 Mar.- Dec.
WO 166/9029 9 York and Lancaster Regiment 1942 Jan.- May
WO 172/902 9 York and Lancaster Regiment 1942 June - Dec.
WO 172/2565 9 York and Lancaster Regiment 1943 Jan.- Dec.
WO 172/4937 9 York and Lancaster Regiment 1944 Jan. - Dec.
WO 172/7683 9 York and Lancaster Regiment 1945 Jan.-Nov.

WO 172/2561 2 West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own) 1943 Apr.- Dec.
WO 172/4933 2 West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own) 1944 Jan. - Dec.
WO 172/7679 2 West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own) 1945 Jan.-Dec.

A lot will depend on when he switched units, but the 172 series will be the Burma ones and the 166 series will cover the time in the UK (and also Iceland).

You can also download a copy of his medal citation from the National Archives website for a cost of £3.50. There used to be a way to get hold of them for free, but not sure if they are still available that way, so would need to check.
 

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