Is there a War Diary entry for the 3rd Royal Field Regiment for December 1943. They were with the 8th Indian Division at the time in Italy, 5 men were killed on the 9th December 1943 and are buried at Sangro Cemetery. An Alan Bowman was one of them, service number 921231. I have applied for his service record, however its the war diary entry for the period i need as well, can anybody help, I searched for it over a couple of days did i miss it or is it under something else.
Derek. Get hold of Gary Tankard on this site. He will get the pages that you need when he next goes to the National Archives. He is a guru for digging this stuff out of the archives. Regards Frank
Derek. The Batteries within an Artillery Regiment each produced a War Diary so if you know which Battery these men were in you may well get a clear story. Regards Frank
Thanks Derek I will find out which battery as there is not a 3rd Field Regiment Royal Artillery for December 1943 war diary.. Im visiting the Archives my self in a few weeks time so thank you for the offer i will have a look Kind Regards Derek and thanks for your help.
The 3rd Field Artillery war diary for 1943 is Royal Artillery: 3 Field Regiment (RA Fd Regt) | The National Archives. Also, battery war diaries for field regiments are almost non-existent at the TNA, certainly compared to the LAA and HAA regiments.
3 Field Regiment RA - The Royal Artillery 1939-45 Might be worth exploring the Divisional War Diary or one of the infantry battalions that they supported. 8th Infantry Division (India) - Wikipedia 8th indian infantry division | WW2Talk The Tiger Strikes, the Tiger Kills, the Tiger Triumphs See 8th Div Actions fought dates etc. Battery war diaries are rare as hens teeth. TNA or Larkhill don't seem to hold them. Might be found in an RHQ archive somewhere. Take a look for yourself, I wouldn't let anyone put me off if I could get there. I spent six years searching for one, eventually found three months of one in a County Archive. Including the page that I needed. Good luck in your endeavours.
There was no obligation for the system to retain sub-unit war diaries. Battery war diaries are particularly important whenever the batteries were detached from their parent regiment. This frequently happened to anti tank batteries which might be placed "Under Command" of an infantry or armoured formation. Sometimes the unit war diaries collect battery (sub unit) war diaries to cover these episodes. Other times they don't. .
Derek. This is the period 8 Ind Div were supposed to be giving the impression of activity on their part of the front during advances right and left - Canadian activity on their right and NZ activity on their left. As it turned out the flanking activities stalled so 8 Ind Div were required to drop the idea of giving the impression and switch to an actual assault. This they did by installing the Impossible Bridge and getting troops over it. Regards Frank
I stood on the Impossible Bridge in Jan 24. It is evident why it could not be built from the home bank. It was a brilliant example of combat engineering in action. Regards Frank
