Royal Marine in Burma

Hi All,
Looking for some help with a recent family contact to the Chindit Society. It pertains to a Royal Marine who was served in the Burma theatre in WW2 and is thought to have been a Chindit. The family have the old-type, one-page service record obtained back in July 1985, which as usual is scant on detail.

My thoughts are that he would more likely have been sent over to 42 or 44 Commando RM and served with these units as part of the 3 Special Service Brigade in the Arakan, rather than end up as a Chindit.

His service details are:

Medals-1939-45 Star, Burma Star, Defence Medal and War Medal.

Depot RM Lympstone from 28/05/1942 to 13/07/1942
HBL RM from 14/07/1942 to 24/10/1943
HBL RM Commando 25/10/1943 to 19/07/1945
Highflyer 20/07/1945 to 19/10/1945
Sanka 20/10/1945 to 24/10/1945
Sanka (on passage) 25/10/1945 to 13/11/1945
Chatham Division 14/11/1945 to 05/06/1946.

I know that Lympstone was the RM Training Depot in Devon and that Highflyer was the Naval Base at Trincomalee in Ceylon, but if anyone can add some more, or has an opinion about his service, I would appreciate your input.

Thanks as always.

Steve

 

Hi Steve,

The Ceylon (Sri Lanka) connection suggests that RM Detachment 385 might also be a possibility. The detachment carried out a number of special operations on the Burmese and Malayan coasts between February and July 1945 and was involved in the reoccupation of Penang in August/September 1945.

I have a booklet produced by the RM Historical Society which includes a nominal roll.

Steve

 

HBL stands for Home Base Ledger signifying personnel serving anywhere in the U.K.

See: Service Record Abbreviations

Steve

 

Thanks Steve, the nominal roll sounds interesting. PM sent.

 

Thanks again for your help Steve, much appreciated.

 

This may or may not be helpful, date wise the above does not really suggest active service abroad for any length of time, the link below is not within the timeline Steve shows in post 1 but there may be something helpful in the write up in page 2 of said link.World War Two, Royal Marine Detachment 385, North Sumatra, Operation Cattle, MID group of five, 1

 

I agree, it's a tricky one Jason. Thanks for the link and info.

 

test

 

Intrigued by what the test was going to be dryan67.

 

Sorry. There was another Royal Marine thread that started with RM and generated a bug that did not allow posting to the thread. I used this thread to test to see if I could post since it was also Royal Marine. See the following thread for more information:

Don't start threads with 'Mail' or 'RM' as the first word in the title (for the moment).

 

See also this thread:

Royal Marine Anti-aircraft Units

 

I see. Thanks.