Hello, I just thought I would introduce myself as a new member! I am the very proud granddaughter of George Williams (1921-2010) who served in the Royal Artillery during WW2. I am currently researching my family tree and am trying to find out more about his military history (he told me lots of stories but I never knew much about where he was and what he did until after his passing) . The Army is a steep learning curve for civilian! I found this amazing website and am touched by how kind, friendly and helpful everyone is and am pleased to be here I look forward to getting to know people. Best wishes Emma
Welcome Emma and good luck with your research. Only way to start is to send off for his service records: https://www.gov.uk/get-copy-military-service-record
Hi Emma This time Tony56 typed faster than me - service records are THE ONE & ONLY place to start TD Well done Tony - this time
Thank you for the welcome, that is very kind of you. I have just got grampa's military history documents through the post, there are so many abbreviations and numbers etc that I think I might need to ask for help! Although I have little experience, I am really hoping that in some way I can to something to contribute to the group too. Nice to meet you
Best to start a new thread with his Name & Regt as the title - that way all his details will be kept together TD forgot to add - upload good scans orientated the right way for members to see and highlight areas you need help with
Thank you, I only recently after all of these years found you could do this! My nanna, his wife, is still with us and applied for his records which arrived ladt week but they are a bit complicated!
If you start a new post with a title of his name, service number and regiment and ................... OK Tricky you won! But would add that it will be helpful to upload copies and you will get help interpreting them.
Hi TD, thank you for getting in touch, luckily we have now received them although there is quite alot of stuff blanked out with a black marker!
Thank you very much for the advice, it is all in paper at the moment so I need to take photos of them as they are too big for my scanner! Also, before his Altzhimers sadly got worse (sorry for my spelling) he wrote his memories of the war in his life story. I thought it might be useful to others so I will post that too for anyone interested?
Hi Emma, If you have a smartphone there is a good free app called PhotoScan which is very good at scanning documents and photos - I use it all the time for scanning photos to upload to the forum. I do have a scanner but it’s a faff to use. If the documents you got are like the ones I have then they are A3 size which is also difficult to fit in the kind of printer/copier/scanner most of us have at home.