Having acquired via drew the War Diaries dating from January 1943 through to June 1946 including the Daily Orders and the Quarterly Reports (June 1st '44 through to June 30th '45) I would like to make them available to other forum members who may be interested. However 1600 large JPEG files with only numeric titles is a lot to upload and as individual files not easy to navigate. Firstly I am reducing file size and "bleaching" the grey background out and turning them into monthly PDF files for continuous on screen reading. With the aid of another forum member (oldmole) all the names ranks and service numbers identified in these pages have been listed in a spreadsheet currently reaching from January '43 to December '44 including those transferred in from other units or transferred out, and attached RASC members. Additionaly I have been converting all the military map reference for the locations that 130FA stopped at or travelled through during their time in France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany together with links to pinpoint them on today's Google Earth maps. Both these efforts are ongoing and wil need a little more time to complete. Rather than upload everything to WW2Talk, (and would the site accept PDF and XLS files), I make it all available to forum members via Google Drive to read. All that I need anyone interested to do is send me a PRIVATE MESSAGE via the forum giving your personal e-mail address so that I can add that to the list of readers on Google Drive. I promise I will not pester you on your private address or pass it on to anyone else. UPDATE 07-JANUARY-2023 I have renewed the links to the files on Google Drive as follows 130 Field Ambulance + 43rd Wessex - Google Drive TINY URL https://tinyurl.com/56kpp627 Regards Kevin
Having carried out a lot of work on making these files easier to access I can now make them freely available to users of WW2T via the following link with no log-in necessary. UPDATE 07-JANUARY-2023 I have renewed the links to the files on Google Drive as follows 130 Field Ambulance + 43rd Wessex - Google Drive TINY URL https://tinyurl.com/56kpp627 If you find this information useful please let me know. Kevin
Great stuff, Kevin. That's some amount of uploading gone on there. More power to those getting good info out there.
Kevin Many thanks for all your hard work and generosity in sharing the results My good friend Cuxhaven Steve will be most interested tn studying the detail
Kevin May I reiterate my earlier remarks, my good friend Cuxhaven Steve has glanced at the War Diaries but has not had time to study the detail. He did however alert me to the fact that the unit left 43 Wessex Division/ 30 Corps for 11 Armoured Division/ 8 Corps in January 1946 As a result I have been able to add two probably four new RAMC units/locations to my Schleswig Holstein data base. Again my grateful thanks
Bluebell Minor Glad to have helped you. Our main aim was to bring together children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren of thos who served in this unit but obviously there is information there of interest to lots of researchers like yourself. Kevin
Thank you for this. Having done extensive research on my unit's WW1 units, I am now starting on WW2. We are off to Arnhem next week so very interested in 128, 129 and 130 Fd Ambs. Elaine Unit Historian, 243 (Wessex) Field Hospital
Even more thanks! Have just had a good look at the files and the Google Earth files are just amazing and will be very useful to us next week. Hopefully will be able to relate them to where we are on the ground. Just one question, do you have the Picture Post copies in a larger form? I cannot seem to get them any larger than thumbnail to view or read. What a great find though! Elaine
Elaine Sorry for the delay in responding, I do not seem to be getting notifications through. The Picture Post jpegs were copied off a web site for the sale of old magazines hence the lack of size. I got the reference to that particular issue from an old posting by the daughter of Major Ledrum Nicol on a now defunct web site. I have today had another search and found that particular copy of Picture Post on sale on E-Bay so took the opportunity to steal the images and will be posting them into Google Drive tomorrow after clean up. I do have in my possession the front page of another issue of Picture Post for September 1944 passed down to me by my mother, much folded and creased. This shows one of the padres, a Catholic Priest, who was with 43rd Wessex, probably 130th Infantry Brigade as my father also a catholic served at mass for him when they had services usually withn the tailgate of a lorry as the altar. I will also post this on Google Drive tomorrow. To anyone else following this link I realise I need to revisit the files and folders to do some cleaning up. Kevin