Gunner 12th Field Malta and 17th Med Africa

DGS,

I would love to see those photos if you can share them on here - it would be amazing.

I have the war diary for the 17th Medium Regt and it certainly is an interesting read - I need to share this with yourself and SuzQ - I'm hoping I'll be able to email it across. If you PM me your address I'll try sending in the next day of so.

Regards,

Mark

 

Hi Suz, hope this is useful


http://ww2troopships.com/crossings/1944.htm


David

 

Thanks again to all of you for helping me out with info and links etc....and now his service record has arrived, fingers crossed it will all start to fall into place ......just need to read up on how to decipher it all now.


Hi DGS & Mark, good to hear back from you both too and looks as though we are all tying in with our dads & grandad, so please keep in touch.

Take care
Suz

 

Hi SuzQ and 51MMO,
As promised, i've now managed to scan the photos (with the help of my son) and attach them below.

The locations are pure guess-work on my part, based on various clues such as:

> the physical (skinny) condition of the men suggesting MALTA under siege,
> pith helmet suggesting AFRICA;
> Short trousers could be MALTA, AFRICA, ITALY... in summer.








Note the medal ribbons on each man; and I know that Dad's rank (front row, LHS) was Lance Bombardier (Regimental Medical Orderly) after May 1944 which might help to place this photo.





We have scanned these photos at VERY high resolution, which allows you to zoom in very close, but cannot post them here due to server file size restrictions.

The mens faces in the 'Battery' photo have a lot of detail in them in the full hi-resolution scan. If you're interested, send me your email address by Private Message, and i will attempt to share a Drop-box link with you.

Enjoy.

DGS

 

Hi DGS

Great to hear back from you....and so uncanny because I was only just talking about it! and thanks so much for putting on the photo's, you have really made my day with the one of the regiment!! and will send you a PM

thanks, so much
Suz

 

Wow - great photos DGS. Thank you so much for sharing them on here with us. I don't recognise any of the individuals in the smaller group photos but I'd love to have a closer look at all of them, particularly the Battery photo. I'll drop you a PM as well if that's ok.

 

Hi Suzq, do not know if you have found this link, apologies if you have

http://ww2today.com/new/2014-2/the-bombing-of-malta

David

 

Hi David

No I hadn't seen that site, so thanks so much for letting me know about it.

Just had a very quick look and looks brilliant with all the info re Malta, Italy etc, so I can see many more hours of reading ahead of me and no doubt even more questions to add to the list!

Good stories and pictures and with the easy date range I was even able to find pictures relating to the bad weather in Italy during 1944, because the war diary kept mentioning this, and now I can see what they were talking about!

thanks again
Suz

 

Hi Everyone

Thanks to all your help and advise with this, I have slowly been managing to sort this out, but unfortunately I am now stuck again!!! so would be grateful for you expertise again, if I could, please?

According to the 17th Med Regt war diary - for those men due to come home via Python, they transferred them to the 18th Medium Regt in Jan 45.

On returning back to the UK - dad was posted to - 1st A/Tank Range Det. (posted to this unit from Depot RA)

So....please forgive my ignorance, but does that mean it is just a depot and he would still have been in the 18th Med...or is it an entirely different unit/regiment?

any help would be great.

thanks
Suz

 

Hi Suz, I may be wrong but my understanding (without seeing his records), he was transferred from the18th Med Reg to the 1st A/Tank Range Det, and that would have been his new unit in the uk. I'm sure some will put me right if I've got it wrong........
Hope the research is going well

David

 

Suz
He was posted to the 18th Med Regt in Jan 45 as this regt were being placed in suspended animation prior to being send home & disbanded in Feb/Mar 45, so he would go with them home & to an RA "Depot" before the WD decided what they wanted to do with these troops.
In your dads case he was on Python leave, so was "allocated" posted to 1st A/Tank. as a home force regt to complete his service.
Posting them to the 18th was just a convenient (Army) way of getting them home & sorted.


Rob

 

Excellent...thanks Rob, that makes sense.

I've put in a request with Andy so see if there is a War Diary available to cover the 18th Med Regt from Jan 45, so I can hopefully continue following his journey home from Italy and find our which Ship, where it would have docked etc...fingers crossed, or else I don't know where to look and will be left with a gap.

With regards to the 1st A/Tank (sorry to be a pain), but any ideas on how/where I can try and find info on what they would have been doing from the March 45 until he was demobbed in April 46?

thanks again
Suz

and ps. sorry for the confusion David, I'm not very good at explaining things

 

No problem Suz, just a question, does his records give any indication where he ways (place location etc) when he was assigned to the 1st A/Tank. I'm not sure but could he have been by then at Chester, Brancaster or even Titchwell does these dates tie up? Hope you can get a definitive answer from the war diaries.


David

 

Hi Suz, don't know if you have found this link

http://www.britain-at-war.org.uk/ww2/Transport_Home/Python/

Hope this is of some help

David

 

My Grandad, who served in the same units, didn't come home until March 1945, having initially travelled to Malta in October 1940. He then returned to NW Europe following VE Day and where (I think) he was a Guard at a German POW camp - not sure how he ended up there and the unit to which he would have been attached.

 

Thanks David.

Hi Mark, thanks for posting again. How is your search going? have you had any luck finding out about their passage home? because I'm hoping that the answer will be in the 18th's diary?

And......I don't know if its just me, but I think its quite sad that all these guys, having spent years together, going through what is beyond imagination...then thankfully coming home, (which is brilliant), but are then all split up and find themselves starting out all over again.

Suz

 

Hi Suz, sent you a PM

David