Searching for fathers war history

Peteden -
Sounds to me like 1st Airborne who left a company in Italy for a long time and were active around Lake Commachio in Northern Italy - I don't think he went to Yugoslavia as that was special mob recruited in the UK in '43 to serve with Brig McLeans mission to Tito - friend of mine went on that - met him later in Rome - he had lost a leg - couldn't find it anywhere he said !
Cheers

 

Hi,
sorry for the delay in replying seems your Dad was with SOE for some time ME66 is one of the codes for an SOE unit what this one did I'm not sure as my main archive is in London and I'm snowbound in the north at present. W/Cpl is war subtansive corporal though he was with SOE as a Sgt and may have risen higher. In WWII some cpls were warrent officers by 1945 and then had to drop down again in the post-war army.
He seems to have joined SOE with a posting to Camberley Reception Depot, as a signaller he would have done a brief course at Fawley Court to learn SOE Sigs techniques and coding, his parachute course would have been at either Kabrit in Egypt or Ramat David in Palestine.
He is also listed as being on Strength ME102 which was the SOE Special Training School in Palestine.
ME 129 was also an SOE establishment

 

Thanks Jedburgh, this seems to prove what we have been told. Pity he did not tell us about it, but that now adds to the joy of searching records at Kew.
Look forward to one day meeting. All information I get will let you know.

Peter

 

Update:

Thanks to Jedburgh for the following;
”seems your Dad was with SOE for some time. ME66 is one of the codes for an SOE unit. What this one did I'm not sure as my main archive is in London and I'm snowbound in the north at present. W/Cpl is war substantive corporal though he was with SOE as a Sgt and may have risen higher. In WWII some cpls were warrant officers by 1945 and then had to drop down again in the post-war army.
He seems to have joined SOE with a posting to Camberley Reception Depot, as a signaller he would have done a brief course at Fawley Court to learn SOE Sigs techniques and coding. His parachute course would have been at either Kabrit in Egypt or Ramat David in Palestine.
He is also listed as being on Strength ME102 which was the SOE Special Training School in Palestine.
ME 129 was also an SOE establishment .”


Today 24/12/10 I spoke with my fathers workmate again and another story he told was that he was “ up in the mountains near a lake and their means of getting out was by a boat that was stored on the shore and hidden. Unfortunately along came a bomber who discharged a bomb and destroyed the boat, so the only way out for them was to walk.”

My brother recalls mention of Palestine so this may fit in.
Another memory I just remembered was in the late 60’s I drove him to meet one of his wartime buddies named Edward Fry (Eddie) in Swindon. My father had painted a picture of what I recall was a villa in the mountains called Villaminova or something similar..
Eddie was a member of a group called “The Special Forces Signals Association” attached to the SOE who held meetings at the Henley rowing club. Do not remember my father attending any of these meetings.


I now look forward to getting to National Archives I the new year and gaining further insight to his role during the war.

Peter

 

Update.

Made my first visit to NA 27/28th Jan and I'm now on overload. With my daughter we looked at 35 files, photographed fully 15 of them. so have a lot of reading to do over the next few weeks.
Unfortuently did not see any refs to my father but what a lot of information these files hold.
At least we now know how things work at the archives and the hints we got from this site (especially the taking of a white sheet of paper to insert under the file pages) were extremely helpfull.

Jedburgh... do you have details of what ME66 refers to and any information you have on my father that we could follow up on would be gratefully received.

Peter

 

Don't forget that future users here may well want to see these files, so please find some secure way of storing them so if others may have similar Service Records to research, they don't have to trek to Kew.... just a suggestion...

 

Will do Kevin, thankfully my daughter is as interested as I am and is also a computer expert so will definately store them and make them available. But will take a little while. Will publish something about each file as we progress.

Peter.

 

Peter will dig out what I have and post it later in the week,

Steven

 

Hi all, after a busy year away I'm now back to trying to finding out about my fathers duties in Yugoslavia.

After several visits to Kew I'm still no further ahead.
Could anyone give me a suggestion of how I may be able to find what agent he was attached to as a wireless operator, or what to look out for on next visit to Kew.
Here is a list of all those files I have looked at, those in red I have photographed.

Air 40/2356,
HS 3/172
HS 5/595, 596, 645, 647, 870, 877, 878, 879,880, 881, 882, 884, 895, 900, 902, 903, 904, 908, 909, 918, 919, 921, 922, 969.
HS 7/14, 272, 273.
HS 8/1009
WO 123/86
WO 201/599, 1600.
WO 204/1988

None of these files have led me to further my knowledge about him.
Many thanks

Peter

 

peter-
the statement by the other Tom may well be true as in fact while we had finished our training in tanks etc - we were invited to join in a special operation by a Major Pine - Coffin- it was some time later in rome that I met with one of the successful volunteers - who was missing a leg- he had been parachuted into Yugoslavia to join Brig Fitzroy MacLean;s "Mission to Tito'- and he was the w/op for his section fighting whoever was handy to fight .....so I missed all that fun as I failed somewhere along the line at Oxford
Cheers

PS - try the "Mission to Tito" of Brig Fitzroy Maclean

 

Thanks to my daughters thirst for knowledge about her granddad she has just found out the following:
This is a Google translation from an Italian document, first bit does not make a lot of sense but it definately gives dads name in the second paragraph.


Mission "Roanoke"

The output of the dramatic partisan roundup winter '44 / '45
and the resumption of activities - from attacks on convoys and garrisons to Republicans on the Via Emilia,
killing in the heart of Stratford's fascist torturer GIPE to work
"Fusco" (Caesar Wells) to battle Ash or Ortaiolo in
February - make 'Oltrepo an excellent place for the establishment of a mission, even if
lower number than the partisan command of Zone VI.
Of this I am also convinced the Americans and British.

On 28 February, after an exploration of Vanoncini accompanied by "Miro" (Anton Ukmar), which meets "American" (Dominic Mezzadra), "Edward" (Italian Stone) and "Faustus" (Fausto Cossu), get the green light, given to Materazzi .
The mission is parachuted onto the Casanova Trebbia the morning of the 'March 8.
There are three components: the American Captain Rawleigh W. Taylor, the England captain Basil WAS Irvin (expert in guerrilla warfare, with experience in Yugoslavia) and the corporal radioman WG Denley. The mission is called "ROANOKE", while the English group
will be referred to as "Genesse".
The "Roanake", which will come to count thirteen members, has the task of establishing co
ntacts with controls partisans, to avoid "friction" with and among the formations, collect and send information on enemy movements.


This sounds very promising and gives us somewhere to go next.

Peter

 

Al Materazzi was one of the OSS Officers in Italy - he died a couple of years back but was a font of information on the Italian Missions.

 

I have Basil Irwins P/F so will look at it this weekend

 

Peter

Signalman W G Denley of MO4 completed Para Cse 77 which commenced on 7/11/43 at Kabrit.

Hope this helps

Arnhem

 

My father..Eddie(Ted) Fry is front, second left, with moustache. I am positive that he kept in touch with your Dad over the years.I have all of his memoirs etc , my brother has most of his WW2 memorabilia.

 

Thank you Wiltshiregirl. I can remember visiting your dad once.
I believe our dads at least did their SOE trading together and that's when the photo was taken.
Have sent you a message and hope to further my information later.

 

Hi, This is an interesting thread as I am researching my father in law's war records and there are some similarities, so was wondering if I could piggy back on some of the research and input from the posters on this thread. I am living in Australia and it would appear that many of the records held by the National Archives are still undigitised

Sgt John Tsirindanis, Army No: RH/6852924

My father in law was originally enlisted from Rhodesia in early 1940 and was posted to the North African Theatre as part of the Rhodesian Platoon in 1 Bn Kings Royal Rifle Corps. He was one of the few survivors from his platoon ( and battalion) after the battles in Libya and Cyrenaicia. He was badly wounded twice, was mentioned in dispatches, and was eventually discharged from the colours and repatriated to Southern Rhodesia in Oct 1942. I suspect this was due to his injuries as the records indicate "Services no longer required".

Where it gets interesting, is that he volunteers again on 17 April 1944, and shows as enlisting in the General Service Corps as a Private in Cairo (which is a long way from where he was discharged to in present-day Zimbabwe. He is then temporarily transferred to the KRRC as a Rifleman. A day later, he is posted from KRRC to HQ Force 133 (18 Apr 1944) as a paid acting Sgt, and then posted the same day to ME62, which from the records is shown as MEF X(1) (ME62). He promoted to W/Sgt in 14 Oct 1944.

He is struck off strength from ME62 and posted to CMF on 1 Jan 1945. He stays with CMF until discharged from service on 30 Oct 1945 and returns to Rhodesia.

I am keen to get more info about his time in ME62. What I do know about him is that he was originally born in Greece and that his family were from Crete and Milos (sometimes shown as Melos) in the Cyclades. He was a fluent native Greek speaker and oral memories indicated that he operated in the Adriatic and was involved in operations on Siphnos and at some time spent a long time on Milos or Naxos hiding from the local garrison. Unfortunately he had early onset altzeimers which affected his memory.

Hopefully some of the research from this thread may have more details and I am happy to post copies of his service records which are surprisingly complete if that would help.
Thanks

John

 

John,

Just sent you a message (PM) and another PM to Peterden, who has not logged onto the site since 2014. It might get a response, though I have my doubts.

 

I have created an new thread regarding my query if anyone wants to comment or add further info.

Sgt John Tsirindanis, Army No: RH/6852924, 1 Bn KRRC and SOE Force 133