He wasn't even Welsh, the 14th Bn. RWF. was raised in Prestatyn late 1915. There must have been a RWF recruitment Sergeant in the Blackburn/Accrington/Altham area and a couple of young lads that were too young for the 11th Bn. ELR. signed up. Mind you, the RWF is quite a prestigious Regiment. At least Great uncle Joseph has a grave, if he had survived Laventie he would have been moved to Mametz wood for the Somme Offensive, and probably not have a known grave. Roy
My paternal Grandfather served in the Wiltshire Reg. during WW1 on the Gallipoli peninsula and later the Middle East. His battalion with another unit were sent up to a ridge line to relieve Anzac troops who had been badly mauled.The two Battalion's were attacked and over-run by a Turkish infantry Div and half of them were never seen again.The survivors fought hand to hand with the Turks while being pushed down the gullies behind the ridge line.These were defended by New Zealander's who had to fire on both English and Turks to break up the attack.My Grandfather survived all this and was pulled out later with the rest of the Battalion to Egypt suffering from Dysentery. The Battalion was re-formed and he was among the first troops to enter Baghdad. I am told that he never said much about his experience's and he died before I was born, the rest of his life was ruined by poor health and periodic malaria attacks. My Father was too young to have fought in WW2 but was one of the occupation troops who served in Germany at the end of the war.As he was the Battery Commander's driver he got to see a lot of the damage that was done and had to drag various officers to place's like Belsen and the dams destroyed by 617 squadron.He was also the Battery passion wagon driver, so got to take part in some other kinds of 'action'. My father's older brother served in the RAF during WW2 and was one of the first ground crew trained to maintain Spitfire's. He was evacuated from France in 1940.(Brest not Dunkirk).A bit later he had to leave Crete in a hurry and ended up on Malta. He served on Malta all through the siege and beyond.I used to have an Italian Airforce Rescue decoration that was taken from a member of a flying boat crew shot down off the coast but lost it during one of my moves. My Father in Law served in the artillery during WW2 and was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940.He was sent out to the Middle East and spent most of the war their. While delivering messages by motorcycle under fire he was shot through the leg by Italians and was mentioned in despatches.He later took part in the defense of Tobruk with the Australian's and carved a cross from an ammo crate which is still in the family.After the battle of El Alamein he ended up in Italy at Monte Casino.After the fall of Italy he moved back to the Middle East and was a radio operator based at Haifa.After the end of the war,instead of going home he joined the Palestine Police and fought the Stern Gang and Haganah instead,twice being blown up.He was badly injured when the King David Hotel was blown up and carried bit's of glass around in his body for the rest of his life. He hated the war in Italy but in a perverted way enjoyed the desert campaigns.
This thread has kind of highlighted that the guys that fought in both World Wars never really talked about their experiences when they came home and this must have been the same for other nationalities so I can't help but wonder whether history would have followed the same course if they had done?
I didn't find out the truth about my uncle until long after my mother (his brother) and his parents had died (and my grandfather's history in WW1).......I knew a bit but not full detail..........unfortunately by the time I had started to latch onto what had happened, my uncle was in a home and had basically lost his marbles. But some very strange things came to light which must have been related to his time as a POW............out of respect for my favourite uncle, I won't post them here.
My paternal grandfather was Argentinian and him and his best mate had read about this thing called "the War" going on in Europe and thought that it sounded like fun! He told his mother he was going to a basketball game in the next town and they got on a boat to England. As he was too young to join the British Army, he had to join the Belgian Royal Free army that had been displaced to Suffolk which is where he met my nan. He was in the D-Day landings, fought through France into Germany and liberated Belsen. As has been said by others, I never knew any of this until I was much older. He never spoke about it, and he also had quite a few medals that again we never quite knew what they were for. After being repatriated back to Argentina (which by all accounts was a 6-month jolly round the East-coast of America) shortly after the war, he returned after two years and lived the rest of his life in England. Being Argentinian, he was incredibly upset at the outbreak of the Falklands war and very angry with the Argentinian government; I guess it brought back a lot of memories of the fighting he had witnessed first hand, and he had always said how pointless the conflict was.
It's a small world Plug, my late mother's cousin was one of the pilots on Malta flying Gloucester Gladiators, then Spitfires. He left the island after the siege with the uniform on his back, one shoe, a golf club and the handle from his suit case!!
When I visited the site of Belsen concentration camp in company with Judge McGrigor (the first judge in the Danny Nightingale case, incidentally), in the museum we found that the exhibits included a photograph of his father, who as a doctor with British forces in 1945 had saved the lives of many inmates. It was a touching moment. Few people leave the Belsen exhibition without tears in their eyes; certainly not me.
While my Grandfather was recovering from dysentery in Egypt he did an embroidery of a regimental cap badge. When my Dad gave me the family bible to look after I found it between a couple of the page's. Mrs Plug got it framed for me as a birthday present and it now hang's on one of our walls. No photographs of him survive and he died before I was born so it's nice to have something that was his. The family bible is a gold mine for sorting out the family tree,all the birth's and death's are in it back to the late 1790's. I found out that a branch of the family emigrated to America and became Mormons,one of them died as a result of falling out of a tree at the age of 78 !!
Both my Grandfathers flew in the war. My paternal Grandfather wasn't a well man with lots of heart and respiratory problems. When war broke out, he was a chef on the Queen Mary so he tried to join the Navy. They wouldn't have him and nor would the Army due to his health. He then did one of the final trans-Atlantic crossings on the QM before her transformation into a troop ship and went AWOL to Canada. Once there he joined the Canadian air force (they weren't as bothered about you being healthy) and was a Navigator. The irony is that when Canada joined the war he was told he was going to be posted to England......and that he'd receive a medal for being posted abroad! He then flew Mosquitoes as a Navigator. Unfortunately I never met his as he died before I was born but I have his flying jacket still which is very precious as well as a flair gun. On the maternal side, my Grandfather flew Wellingtons and Dakotas. Mostly doing supply but he did tow gliders at Arnem (if you ask him about it he just points at his log book and says 'That was a bugger') and fly POW's home from the camps. Both experiences effected him greatly. The funny thing in he can't remember what he had for breakfast but he can remember every detail from his log book without pause. My Grandmother (maternal again) used to drive trucks which picked up downed aircraft.....and their crew. I think she had 4 nervous breakdowns in the end unfortunately. She was always known by her wartime nickname of 'Billy' Beales. Again she never really spoke about the war but it took it's toll on her.
WW2 My Grandfather started off in the RAF as an aircraft mechanic. He was responsible for one aircraft and was based somewhere on the east coast. His duties were to prep the aircraft whenever he received a call to do so. All a bit odd and my Grandfather is very vague on the detail when asked. However he then ended up in the army as bodyguard to the commander in chief of the 1st armoured division. Yet again he is very vague on details but he has showed me some very interesting pics. He doesn't like to talk about the war and I respect his privacy.
Slightly different tale as my parents/grand parents were to young/old for WW2, however my family come from Bath & my father was born in 1936. His Dad was too old to fight so was ARP (I think), Bath was heavily bombed by the Germans in 1940, the local Air raid shelter had already taken a direct hit, killing the local bobby, so the following night they were using some sort of metal table inside the house, when the house 3 doors up was hit, killing the occupants & reducing my grandparents house to rubble. Grandad was out working nearby but was soon back helping to get my gran, dad & his three brothers out of the wreckage. The 2 older boys were shipped off to relatives but dad & his younger brother slept rough in a car with his parents for a couple of nights down by Weston super Mare somewhere, they were all suffering from shock & didn't really know what to do. Not bad for my Dad's earliest memories eh? When I was a kid this wasn't really talked about although you knew that it had happened. Just before my Gran died, some 20 years ago, one of my cousins got her to write about it. This was printed in the local Bath paper a couple of years ago to commerate 60 years since the Bath blitz, it's tear jerking stuff when it's your own Dad as a little 4 year old boy
Nora Guilfoyle had six sons, thankfully (my granddad) Michael, her youngest, was even too young for the RWF to go to France. Roy
With you there. Been there several times over the years since my dad took me there the first time back in 1976. There's a few of his ashes resting over-looking the beach now! Fascinated by those great (tragic) conflicts from a by-gone era with different views and values!
My great uncle John fought at Gallipoli. I don't remember him as he died when I was no more than a toddler, but I'm told he was always jolly and his fave story was that he made the whole Turkish army run...but they couldn't catch him!! He also apparently made light of being shot in the arse although he was never right there after. On a lighter note, my mates dad was stationed in Cyprus during the troubles there. He was given one bullet to protect the posty but basically said "sod that, if they come after us I'll use the bullet on meself lol"
strange... i spent a whole part of my youth dab in the middle of the Ypres Salient on a 10 minute from that most horrrid of palaces in 915 and 1917, Passchendale.. i must have visited the TYNE COT cemitry a hundred times since then. Last year i spent a week visiting the Somme region that runs out of Ypres southward.. up to Vimy and the places next to it Last year when touring sScotland, we did notice the effect of Kitcheners army drawing everywhere through the WW1 memorials with names of the fallen young man in literally every village or at every crossroad in the smallest of communities on the remotest of places. so i guess i'm educated on that part of history And still i have no war stories to tell... i have no family or do not know of any family that had family that was in the trenches. Still there were Belgians in the trenches. As, to myth and history, it is there that the will of Flemish people to get rid of it's French speaking masters got lit. Flemish speaking farmers sons being sent into battle and death by French speaking officers. Which itself caused bad communication thus misery and unnecsary suffering.. It has Always fascinated me how people rise and shrivel under intense circumstances. And I still cannot comprehend how circumstances can get people from the other side of the world p.e. to get in a landingcraft , wait for a day and then charge a beach, knowing death is almost but garantueed.. balls? those men , most of them mere boys, had balls... and unphathemable courage.. to all, for ever in your debt...
Roy - your comments about RWF were very interesting.... my grandfather was from outside Preston and he ended up in the RWF. I did a lot of our family tree research last year and found out tons about my paternal grandfather (who seems to have been a bit of a bugger from what I can piece together! - I never knew him as he died in the 1950s) - He went to France in July 1915 and was enlisted as a private in the ASC, he came an acting corporal, and then an acting sergeant, before being promoted formally to corporal. He appears to have been stationed at various places around the Somme. Unfortunately, there arent a lot of records for the ASC left as a lot were destroyed in the Blitz. We know that In 1916 he applied to the Army for a Commission to become an officer in the Royal Artillery. This was approved and he was sent to Cambridge to the OTC, where in November 17 he passed and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant, and then subsequently to 1st Lieutenant, in the Royal Welsh Fusileers. He (fortunately I guess) failed a medical as he needed glasses and was sent to a Garrison Batallion in Ireland, before later returning to France. He appears to have been wounded or injured as he also spent time at a 1st Army Hospital in Cambridge, and later at a Russian funded convalescent army hospital in Chelsea in London. THanks to Paivi who went to the National Archive in Kew - I have his Military Officer file - which is just fascinating.... The remainder of my family at the time were all clergymen in the Church of England, and all served as Chaplains in the Army in France. One of my great uncles sons was a Lancaster Pilot in WW2 and he was shot down over Holland and is buried in a War cemetery in Holland and my late maternal grandfather was a navigator in a Mosquito in WW2. My Uncle was in the Cold Stream guards and was killed in Action in WW2 in fighting around Lake Como in Italy and is buried there. I Famosi Quattro did a bit of a military tour a few years ago, and we went to the Somme, Ypres and the Menin Gate, Colditz and Auschwitz. Of all the trips we have done, this was the most memorable. My visit to Auschwitz, will stay with me forever. Truly humbling and chilling.
