Hi I was wondering anyone could help. I'm trying to find out where my granddad, Frederick Richard Whitehouse (born May 1910) served in WW2. He wasn't enlisted at first because he was employed by the MOD to build stuff (he was a builder) - and my Mum recalls stories of when he was working in Coventry during the time it was bombed. Had to stop in a pub on his drive home for a swift pint to steady his nerves! Eventually, he joined the Royal Artillery and was stationed at Woolwich Barracks. We have his cap badge but no idea of which Regiment. He was from Staffordshire and this would have been some time after the Coventry bombings. In 1944 he ended up in France where he was wounded. He was brought back to a hospital in Shooters Hill and then transferred to a hospital in Preston - which is where my Mum met him for the first time (she was 3). They wanted to amputate his leg, but my Nan, a nurse and a very determined lady, countermanded the doctors, took him home and nursed him back to health. He kept his leg. No one in the family knows anything more about his war service because he never talked about it. Does anyone know where I should start? Many thanks
To repeat a post I made to a different new member the other day: The single best thing you can do is apply directly to the MOD for your grandfather's service records. A name and date of birth should suffice, but give them all the information you have to increase the (already healthy) chance of success. Here: Get a copy of military service records - GOV.UK All being well, in a few weeks you will receive a lot of information: dates, units, training courses taken, promotions, hospitalisation and internment, awards and penalties. Once you have dates and unit names you can pursue unit histories and war diaries to add detail--if you're lucky it can get very granular.
