14275131 John Charles (Chuck) RINGSTEAD, Royal Artillery: ( Monte Cassino and Normandy campaigns)

Hey thanks Sheldrake, thanks for your insight, it’s much appreciate.

cheers Ed Ringstead

 

Inch by inch mate….we get there.

cheers Ed

 

A typical lazy full of excuses response from the British civil service.They need a kick up their backsides and get themselves back in the office.
They will be dining off this covid cant do mode for years to come.

Ed well done for chasing them keep us updated on your progress and it will open up for you when you do get the records.








regards
Clive

 

yes, but that tended to be in theatre. I do not think RA was combed through in Italy to provide infantrymen in France. Gunners provided many of the reinforcements for infantry in Italy.

 

There is another possibility. Family histories sometimes become distorted. Monte something or other which is in Sicily or Italy becomes Monte Cassino and "D Day and Normandy" may have been remembered when the truth was Northwest Europe.

Here are some gunner units whose soldiers would have Italy and NW Europe campaign medals.

XXX Corps including 7th Armoured Division, and 50th and 51st Highland Divisions, its corps artillery of 73 Anti tank Regiment and 4 Survey Regiment, 5th AGRA 7, 64 & 84 Medium Regiments all served in Sicily. 7th Armoured Division and 146 Field Regiment landed at Salerno in Italy as part of X Corps and served there until December. These formations and units were all transferred to the UK for the Normandy campaign by January 1944.

Besides the 5th Infantry Division the Canadian Corps and various artillery units were transferred to North West Europe for the final assult on Germany. These were 32 & 56 Heavy Regiments and 51 and 69 Medium regiments and transferred by March 1945 in time for their soldiers to be awarded the NW Europe ribbon.

 

Thanks for your response appreciated. But Glasgow has had my request and cheque for six months without acknowledgment. Cheers Ed Ringstead

 

hey Sheldrake, you must be a mate of Frank de Planta who gives tours of the Monti cassino. Frank knows his RA Regiments clearly as you do.

I don’t known my dads regiment but I do know he told me he was on 25 pounder (as he called them). Now I don’t know what a regiment consists of in terms of gun sizes but I would guess most regiments had 25 pounders.

He also mentioned he wasn’t involved in the actual DDay landing but followed behind the infantry with support artillery. He told me he was involved in the fighting around Cann in Brittany. Apart from that he never said much about his time in WW2. Conversations were a bit like pulling hens teeth out of him.

I really appreciate the detail you have explained above as it narrows down the field of RA regiments involved in those campaigns of which I realise there are lots of them.

many thanks again on this wet Sunday afternoon for spending the time to respond.

cheers Ed Ringstead

 

thanks for your words of encouragement Clive. I will dog on to get to the bottom of dads story.
Incidentally I know more about his father (my grandfathers )WW1 exploits than I do about about my own fathers war record . My granddad had the dubious pleasure of being interned in Austria during the outbreak of WW1 when he was ridding for an owner Count Von Berechtold who’s fateful decision started the First World War. Berechtold had a racing stud and day job was the foreign secretary of Austrian Hungarian empire. But that is another fascinating family story I am still unpicking.

But hey hoe…..on an upwards.

 

That we do Ed.

Luckily I got my grandad’s records back a few months before the Covid chaos struck, but even then they still took nearly a year to arrive (he was a Gunner in 92nd Field, funnily enough, but was not in Normandy. Transferred with 5th Division to NW Europe in March ‘45).

I’ve been meaning for a while now to send off for three more family service records, but all the talk of severe delays has been holding me back. That said, I’m not exactly going to get anything anytime soon by standing still am I!

 

Hi Steve, I was fairly hopeful of a positive response from the MOD in Glasgow but I have just received this note after chasing them…

quote:-

Thank you for your email


I am sorry to inform you that as a consequence of the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic and direction from the Scottish Government, the department has only recently returned to the office. The files necessary to process requests from the time frame you are interested in are only held in paper format and have not been accessible during lockdown.


A significant backlog of work has built up during the lockdown period as postal applications continued to be sent to the office. Regrettably these unprecedented circumstances mean that applications sent in the last year or so may not yet have been actioned or even opened. Additional staffing resources have been identified and are being utilised.


At the moment, I am afraid your application is likely to be in a queue and we are currently unable to provide a definitive date when a response will be issued to you. I sincerely regret to have to send you a disappointing response and ask for your patience and understanding while we work on our backlog.

Regards

Gerry McArdle

SO3 | Disclosures 4 (Historical) | MP 555 | APC Support Division | Army Personnel Centre | Kentigern House | 65 Brown St | Glasgow | G2 8EX

unquote….

so not only have the MOD not bothered to reply, to my application confirming it was in a que.
They haven’t opened applications.
They haven’t prioritised requests…
And have no idea when they are going to get round to responding.

I posted this so that similar folk to myself trying to find out the war records of family are not under any false illusions of a quietly and methodically organisation working in background churning through the backlog.

on and upwards, but the summit is even further away now.

regards Ed

 

Yep, sounds about right Ed, but no consolation to you, of course. If you sent a dated cheque they could well end up returning that to you when the six month limit expires, then it seems you have to start all over again, as others have found. When I dip my toes back in, I must remember to send an undated cheque.

This is an interesting and on topic thread, if you’ve not already read it:

Service Records application - MOD response timescale