Desperate to find out about my Grandfather

Discussion in 'Service Records' started by JBaron, May 11, 2017.

  1. JBaron

    JBaron Member

    Hi All

    Hope you're well?

    Just a little update...Glasgow emailed and said they had doubled checked everything and the B103 is missing.

    I'm off down south to The Keep Military Museum tomorrow, which I believe has some information about the 86th AT. Fingers crossed.

    I've also found the Museum of the Manchester regiment and emailed to see if they may have anything and also the records office Ashton Under Lyne.
    So, I'll be planning trips to these as well.

    It looks like I'll have to go down the route of the Request for Information from the Pensions office and hope they have something.

    Has anyone had experience of this and could maybe advise of suitable content for the letter I need to write?

    Thanks
    Jo
     
  2. Tullybrone

    Tullybrone Senior Member

    Hi Jo,

    Sorry to hear you drew a blank at Glasgow.

    This internet site has examples of FOI requests sent to Veterans Agency so you can have a look at the format.

    You may not want to use their template as it retains your request on their site and it is available to all to see.

    Make an FOI request to 'Service Personnel and Veterans Agency'

    Another page on their site gives the below email address for FOI requests to Veterans Agency,

    cio-foi@mod.uk

    Good Luck

    Steve Y
     
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  3. JBaron

    JBaron Member

    Hi All

    Drew a blank with the Pensions Department, they just referred me back to the MOD.

    Still waiting for a response from the email address suggested by Steve, above.
     
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  4. JBaron

    JBaron Member

    Looks like its the end of the road...a negative back from cio-foi and the Pensions Department.
    Seems that the 3 years between 1941 and 1944 are just 'missing' from my Grandfather's records.

    It's absolutely gutting to have come this far and have to stop.

    Thank you to all who have read and/or posted !
     
  5. Tullybrone

    Tullybrone Senior Member

    Hi Jo,

    Sorry to hear your news.

    While it's likely no consolation to you I'd say you've been very unlucky finding that his B103's have been mislaid and or deliberately culled from his file sometime over the past 70 years.

    I'm sure that once either the 75th anniversary of the end of WW2 or the individual soldiers 75th discharge anniversary date or 110 years after the soldiers birth date arrives MOD will likely look to put WW2 records online via Ancestry/ FMP (as occurred with pre 1920 papers).

    Perhaps all or some of the currently missing service papers may be found and once aced online will be discoverable in the years to come.

    Steve Y
     
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  6. James Harvey

    James Harvey Senior Member

    Yes I have a ww1 other ranks service record he was promoted Jan 18 and served ww2 as well but all his officers paperwork from ww1 and 2 have been lost but his other rank file was still sealed at the mod so cost me £30 when all other ww1 records are in the public domain
     
  7. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member


    My late father, Walter Slemmings, was with the 86th Anti-Tank-Gun Regiment at Hill 112, Maltot and Nijmegen. He recalled to me that he was first in Manchester with a heavy-machine gun unit which then became the 86th. So I suspect that '88th' is a misprint for the 86th.
     
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  8. JBaron

    JBaron Member

    Thank you for the reply. Where was your Father from? Is it possible they served together? As you may have read, I'm missing 3 years of my Grandfather's service records but i believe he was fighting around Maltot before he was killed in July 1944.
     
  9. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    Dad certainly mentioned Maltot as that was where they attempted to sleep in a badly damaged school where the ferro-concrete blocks were hanging out of the ceiling on the steel rods. It was raining heavily that night and they were just moving into the building when a bunch of RMPs (military police or Redcaps) turned up and kicked them out. The RMPs said the building was 'dangerous' so everyone had to sleep in a wet field. The following morning a concealed battery of 5.5-inch guns next door opened up and their muzzle blast was sufficient for the school to collapse like a house of cards. The Redcaps were not quite as unpopular AFTER that. Wally was a R.E.M.E fitter with the 86th and he mostly talked about the Crusader towing vehicles so - from that - I assume that he was mostly attached to one of the two towed 17-pounder batteries. Was your grandfather on Crusaders or M-10s?
    Barry
     
  10. Swiper

    Swiper Resident Sospan

    Few more angles to dredge up, supporting infantry from 43rd Wessex, and Tankies accounts from 31 Tank Brigade (in addition to any other arty), along with XII Corps documentation.

    You'd be astonished what can crop up in odd places. A dead-end like this is a set-back, but not yet the end of the story.

    At the very least, from the above approach you can laterally piece together an account of what his life was like after arriving in Normandy.

    The incident in Maltot is unlikely to have taken place before Operation Express, I'd actually wager it occurred a bit later (owing to Mediums) around 4 - 6 August, after 53rd Division took Hill 112 and secured up to the western bank of the Orne.

    The German side of the battle is available in numerous books such as:
    Wilhelm Tieke, In the Firestorm of the Last Years of the War: II. SS-Panzerkorps with the 9. and 10. SS-Divisions “Hohenstaufen” and “Frundsberg”, (Winnipeg: Man, JJ Fedorowics Publishing, 1999).
    Dieter Stenger, Panzers East and West: The German 10th SS Panzer Division from the Eastern Front to Normandy, (Mechanicsburg PA: Stackpole, 2017).
    Will Fey, Armour Battles of the Waffen-SS: 1943 – 45, (Mechanicsburg PA: Stackpole, 2003).

    I pulled this piece together from a similar approach.
    Another Thinning Out Parade
     
  11. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    I can also recommend 'Mailed Fist' by John Foley, who commanded three Churchills, Avenger, Alert and Angler, at Hill 112. One of the incidents in that book was actually witnessed by Wally. One of Foley's officers unhooked a spade from the side of a tank and went off. He was going to the toilet so Foley lost interest. A few minutes later voices came on the radio urgently demanding medical aid. It seems that a German sniper had seen the said officer going to the toilet and - as Foley commented - given the choice between the back of his head and his bottom, had shot-at 'the larger but funnier target'. He came back face-down on a stretcher as he had been shot through both buttocks (in, out, in out). Now my late father read that and said: "We saw that. The only difference was we were told it had been a piece of shrapnel but it was definitely both buttocks".

    Also at Hill 112 Wally remembered being on the back slopes of the hill while Tigers and Panzer-Grenadiers were attacking the front slope. In an adjacent slit-trench was an RAF liaison trying to call down rocket-firing Typhoons from 'the cab rank' but there was a glitch. Finally they swooped in. The Typhoons were low and fast, firing straight into the face of the German attack and from just above Wally's trench. A little later he heard the RAF liaison say: "Thank you for the close-support… next time not so f***ing close!"

    Another book which deals with Hill 112 is Alexander McKee's 'Caen: Anvil of Victory'. He interviewed both sides and includes accounts by the Germans. They called Hill 112 'the hill of the calvary' due to a way-side cross that was near the top.

    It was also near here and around this time that they got into trouble due to the Norman's passion for Catholicism. He was with an 86th Crusader battery advancing into a village. The lead vehicle was a Universal Carrier driven by a Bombardier and containing a Lieutenant, a Captain and a Major. They had been told to 'turn left at the church' but there were THREE churches in the village. Each officer picked a different one and the final pick came down to the Bombardier who said "F*** it, it's this one" and they made the turn. After a mile they pulled up the Crusaders, etc, and were parked in convoy at the side of a quiet wooded road, having a brew. The hedge next to Wally started to move and he slowly reached for his rifle to hit the hedge with the rifle butt. A khaki-clad and blacked-up Monmouthshire Light Infantryman appeared, announced that they were raiding BEHIND German lines and wanted to know where the f*** the 86th thought they were. A look in the hedge and ditch revealed a number of rather confused Commando-style Monmouths. At this point a gunner came back down the road marching a blond Waffen SS officer (at gunpoint) and looking rather proud of himself. He was was told: "That's lucky" to which he replied, "No luck... there are lots of them just up the road".

    Then they all looked UP and saw that the trees they were parked under were full of Germans waiting to surrender - who had been patiently waiting for the Tommies to finish their tea. It appears sniper platforms, etc, had been built into the trees years prior and the trees had grown up around them. No-one had spotted that they were brewing up UNDER a German unit. Needless to say the 86th got out… rather fast….!

    His other memory of Hill 112 was the flies. Domestic animals were being killed and decomposing rather fast in the summer heat and flies were swarming everywhere. He said it was a fight between the soldiers and the flies as to who got their food first. Their medical officer had got lost in the Channel crossing as the U.S. Landing Ship Tank (LST) could not carry every vehicle and the medical officer had to get on a later ship. He finally reached them at Hill 112, bounced into the field in a Carrier and promptly announced that the dead carcasses were a 'hazard to health' and started pouring petrol on them. Problem was... anything on Hill 112 that generated smoke or dust got shot-at by the Germans and there were no senior officers around who out-ranked the medical officer who could stop him. Wally said he'd lit three or four carcasses when the first mortar and shell-fire started coming down and they were mortared for four hours on the strength of him 'doing his job'. He never did it again.

    The German 'rocket mortars', the Nebelwerfer 41, made a big impression on them. They had a distinct wailing sound - like women crying in the distance - and were known at the Sobbing Sisters to the British and Canadians. Other nicknames included Screaming Mimis, Moaning Minnies, etc. There were three Nebelwerfer units deployed around Hill 112. Wally's luckiest escape was when one of the Crusaders had a flat battery and they drove out with a 'slave' Universal Carrier which carried a battery charger. Wally and a mate were working on the battery but once hooked up, it was a one-man job. Looking around, Wally spotted a hen house about 200 metres away and he said he's nick some eggs. While there he heard the familiar sobbing sound followed by multiple bursts as the salvo went off. Returning he found the burst had been around the Crusader and all he could find of his workmate was one boot with a foot in it. And he was empty-handed, another unit had already raided the hen house. He said it was the luckiest 'no breakfast' he ever experienced.

    Barry
     
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  12. JBaron

    JBaron Member

    Hi Barry
    I'm afraid i know very little about my Grandfather. My mother was only a baby when he was killed so she never knew him either. All I know about him is the following:
    He joined the 6th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers in 1938 at the age of 23.
    He was then moved to 9th Battalion The Manchester Regiment in 1939 and then posted to 2/9th 1940.
    This was then converted to a Gunner in 88th Anti Tank RA in 1941 (or if this is a mis-print, it was the 86th)
    There is no more information until his death was recorded in 1944.

    Someone has previously suggested that if he was with the 88th, he may have been a battlefield replacement for the 86th just before he died.
    His B103 form was not returned with all of his other papers, hence the 3yr gap.

    I can only assume from the helpful people on here and piecing together snippets of information, that he was fighting on Hill 112.

    Jo
     
  13. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    I have gathered some of his story from reading various postings already. In fact it was your interest which drew mine to this forum as I was doing a casual search for the 86th. I think I have posted elsewhere that I strongly suspect the '88th' is a mis-print for 86th. It is certainly not impossible!
    If you want a feel for the area in which he was serving then I suggest the books Mailed Fist and Caen: Anvil Of Victory both of which I have mentioned just above.

    I did jot down around 10,000 words or so of a verbal history from him many years ago and I will have to dig it out and try and post it. I CAN tell you that the 86th had a very rough crossing of the Channel as it was during the storm which wrecked the US Mulberry Harbour and damaged the UK and Canadian one. The LST (Landing Ship Tank) was rolling so badly that the U.S. crew told the Brits that if it rolled any further it would capsize. So your grandfather would have experienced that. One man was trapped on deck in the cab of a Quad and was only found two days later very dehydrated. He had been unable to get out due to the force of the waves breaking over the bows of the ship but he'd also been very very seasick in the cab of the Quad and unable to get out to get water. Strangely my late father was not seasick but he was heavily land sick once he got ashore, a trait I also suffer from even today. It appears we could both adjust easily to a ship's movement but we cannot adjust back again so easily. I still walk around for a day or two lifting my foot waiting for the deck to come up again! :)

    I can also say that they landed around D+11 (17th June?) and that my father and his brother Ernie both disembarked on the same beach and at the same time. We know this as they both witnessed the same incident between them, but from different sides. As dad and Ernie's LSTs both ran on to the beach to unload, another LST was unloading between them, carrying a 25-pounder field gun battery. As the bows opened and the 25-pounders rolled out, one of the gun crews suddenly did a 'crash action' drill - right on the beach itself - dropped a gun trail, loaded and fired, to put a high explosive 25-pound shell into a church tower a few hundred yards further inland. It seems that - even 11 days later - a suspected German sniper was still holding out in the church tower and the LSTs had been radioed for assistance as they came in. The 25-pounder unit volunteered to help and removed the church tower, the sniper and the problem with one shell. So it is likely that your grandfather will have witnessed that incident as well.

    Snipers were a persistent problem, especially if they were committed Waffen SS (armed SS). Wally recalled they were in one Normandy field for several days and they'd suffered persistent sniping casualties. Several times they sprayed the hedges and tree-tops around the field with gunfire but to no avail. The sniper continued to make hits. Around day four the sniper was eventually found, hidden in faggots (a woodpile of cut wood) and only 50 to 100 yards from where he had been shooting his victims. The sniper had buried himself into the woodpile and made a camouflaged nest for himself. Unfortunately the troops who found him were in no mood to take prisoners. Wally saw him being shot, at point-blank range, by a British soldier who called his Sten gun his 'chopper'. The unfortunate Hitler Youth sniper - aged about 16 or 17 - was blown in half. This would place the 86th near to the 12th SS 'Hitler Jugend' (Hitler Youth) division. The 12th were deployed around Carpiquet Aerodrome and Wally frequently mentioned incidents around Carpiquet.

    Shooting prisoners was clearly bad but both sides did it at times. Crews of British flame-thrower tanks such as the Churchill Crocodiles were frequently lined up beside their damaged tanks and shot by the Germans as they were using flame-throwers. On the other hand Wally named a particular British regiment which found some of its men had been mistreated and killed by the SS in cold blood. They retaliated and - by popular account - handed in no prisoners until the end of the war. Prisoners WERE taken but all somehow managed to either fall under the tracks of a passing tank, unexpectedly went for a walk in a minefield or those Sten guns really were soooo unreliable and just 'went off' at the wrong moment. Unfortunately, such is total war. On the other hand Wally got on with most Germans he met and they even played football with some German prisoners of war.

    Barry
     
  14. JBaron

    JBaron Member

    Is it likely that your Father and my Grandfather may have known each other or would the 86th be too big a regiment? My Grandfather was from Derbyshire but I think the Manchesters was the closest to him at the time he signed up in 1938
     
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  15. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    Do you know which battery he was with? One of the two M-10 batteries or one of the two Crusader (towed) batteries? Wally's memories seem to stress the Crusaders rather more than the M-10s.

    Also see if you can find the 'Salvage Squad' TV episode fronted by Suggs (out of the pop group Madness) where they rebuilt an M-10 to running order. Suggs went to the former Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich and actually read from… the records of 86th Anti-Tank Gun Regiment. I nearly fell out of my chair!

    Barry
     
  16. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    Found it:



    Barry
     
  17. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    Go to time code 14:40. 86th gets a name check and I believe the account Suggs reads is from a page of the 86th I have already read elsewhere on here.

    Barry
     
  18. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    Also this:



    Shots of Crusader gun tractors are rare but this appears to be a Crusader at this time code.

    Barry

    1.jpg
     
  19. Warspite1

    Warspite1 Member

    Having carefully compared the above footage with the surviving Crusade gun tractor at the Dutch Overloon Museum I can confirm that the second vehicle IS a Crusader and the vehicle ahead of it may also be a gun tractor. However the first is heavily camouflaged and appears to have rather different upper works. I know there were some variations between vehicles as the one Wally and I saw many years ago at Bovington was a different mark and he remarked on the differences it exhibited. It may depend on whether they were converted from Mark I or Mark III Crusaders.
    See:

    Crusader tank - Wikipedia

    It is also possible that the first vehicle on the road is actually a command Crusader as referred-to in the above link. See time code 06:07 and just before when the first vehicle comes down the road and passes the cameraman before the second vehicle comes out of the field and follows it.

    Barry
     
  20. DannyM

    DannyM Member

    Hi,
    The vehicle could be an AA Crusader tank.

    The “19009” is the Unit Mobilisation Serial Number and identifies it as a vehicle from the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry.

    Regards

    Danny
     

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