Now believed 1 AA (not 2 AA) Regt RA 1940 query ?

Boooo... I have all the RA Regt diaries now- just a few Bde and a fair few Bty diaries to go.

 

I could have sworn I posted a 2nd reply on this thread last night !

Ref 16 Battery. I checked my books last night and they are listed under another regtiment as of 10th May 1940 in my sources. They could either have been attached or the CWGC has it wrong.

Any RA experts can check to confirm who the battery was with in May 1940?

Routledge has them in 4th HAA Regiment (16th, 18th, 21st & 27th) in May 1940. An Order of battle dated May 1940 also states that 2nd HAA Regt. was missing one battery. Which may explain why the 4th has four batteries.

Bod

 

Bit of an update on Maurice. I have been contacted on here by his grandaughter who has been very helpful filling in some details.
Maurice was wounded on the beach at Dunkirk and captured by the Germans, he was taken by train to a hospital in Sage, where he died of his wounds.
The upside is that my wife is now in communication with Maurice`s grandaughter as they are second cousins who didn`t know each other existed previously.
Here`s a pic supplied by Maurice`s grandaughter of Maurice (sitting in uniform) on his wedding day in 1927.

 

The mystery deepens.
Maurice`s grandaughter has got hold of a copy of his death certificate, it lists him as having died on 4th February 1941 near Borkum France. Cause of death, killed in action at sea.
The only Borkum I can find is in Germany about 60 miles ? north west of Sage so reasonably close.
His grandaughter is waiting for his service records to try and shed some more light.
So far there are different dates for his death, different circumstances and a different location.

 

Finally got a copy of Maurice`s service records, I scanned the page which details his death, not much else to add by the looks of it unfortunately.

 

Bit of a thread ressurrection as I was going over Maurice`s paperwork again. On his service record he was posted to 16/4 AA Regt on 24/10/39. Underneath there is a printed note stating "Becomes 16 Bty/1st AA Regt" on 29/01/40. He goes on leave to UK 03/04/40, rejoins on 14/04/40 and then is listed as "missing" dated "prior to 15/08/40". All of these are listing his unit as 16/1aa.
The Graves Concentration Form dated 26/08/47 lists him as being removed from Borkum cemetery, and re-buried at Sage CWGC cemetery on 31/05/47. Cause of death is "DRD" which I presume is "drowned" between dates of 28/05/40 - 23/06/40. On this document he is listed as 16/2aa Regt.

Edit: .... so from this I gather that 16/4AA Regt became the 16/1AA Regt on 29/01/40.
.... Maurice was still in the 16/1AA Regt when he was lost.
.... From a snippet on a war diary posted earlier it would seem that 16/1AA retreated to Bray Dunes on the 30th-31st May

 

The 1st Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regt diary runs from Aug 1939 to the end of June 1940. It contains 121 various pages inc appendices so the cost at my 10p per page rate is £12.10

 

Thanks for the reply Andy, sent you a PM

 

slick,

Try not to get hung up with which regiment 16th AA Bty was under command in France and Belgium. Surely the important part of the story is what happened after his capture when he was no longer with his unit.

That having been said, here's a bit of context off the top of my head to show why the regimental detail is not that important.

Whereas the battalion/regiment for infantry and tank units was the basic organic unit which fought under the command of a brigade - any brigade - the basic organic unit in the artillery was the battery which fought under the command of an RA regiment or independantly under a brigade. In otherwords, an AA battery could hop around different AA regiments with virtually no loss of effectiveness. On the otherhand infantry companies an tank squadrons were largely reliant on their (parent) battalion/regiment for support.

Before the war, 16th AA Battery was a regular unit part of 4th AA Regiment RA. It had 3" heavy AA guns. 4th AA Regt also had under command two other 3" batteries 18th and 20th and a light AA battery the 3rd Light AA Battery. They were based in and around Bulford and were part of the forces included in an expeditionary force.

When war was declared, 20th AA Battery was immediatly sent out to Egypt. A new battery was raised in its place, the 23rd, which was quickly renumbered 27th for some reason.

As intended, 4th AA Regiment was one of the first to be despatched to France. After a while (you probably have the exact date) there was a reorganization of batteries amongst the regiments. The light AA batteries were removed and employed elsewhere and 3" batteries were swopped with 3.7" batteries to create a mix of two 3" and one 3.7" battery to each regiment. This swopping was done among the 9 batteries of 1st, 3rd and 4th AA Regiments.

Thus, 16th AA Battery came under command 1st AA Regiment.

Now, had the Phoney War ended in a diplomatic solution, and the BEF returned to the UK without firing a single round, it is almost certain that 16th AA Battery would have returned to the very same barracks it had left in/near Bulford and returned to the command of 4th AA Regiment. The attachment to 1st AA Regiment in France being a very temporary affair lost to history save for the pedantically inclined historians amongst us.

Alas, such an outcome was not observed. The BEF returned to the UK in ragged order and returning to original pre-war barracks and parent regiment was not high on the list of priorities.

The temporary attachment to 1st AA Regiment effectly become a merry-go-round of attachments to any number of formations before the war ended.

By July 1940, 16th HAA Battery had been selected to deploy out to the Middle East under the command of 2nd HAA Regiment. It arrived in September 1940.

Take-away comment. Once the shooting had started in May 1940 the precise command structure was a rapidly moving target. In otherwords, from 9th May onwards, there is a very good chance the formation officially commanding 16th AA Battery changed from 1st AA Regiment more than once. Almost certainly the, on the spot, unofficial command structure would have shown little similarity to normality. Adhoc command structures were more the norm than the exception.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks Mark, unfortunately his fate is a mystery. His records listed him as pow, then missing, then DRD. I did a search on ancestry to see if he popped up on any pow lists but to no avail. To add to the confusion his record stated that his body was found near Borkum France, but the island of Borkum is in Northern Germany. I did wonder if he was lost whilst getting a lift across the channel from the beaches, and his body was washed up on Borkum, but that is a helluva way from the Dunkirk area.

 

Indeed.

At some point he was separated from his collegues/unit - 16th AA Battery. Now, that could have been deliberate or enforced.

For example, he (and maybe some others) were detached from the Battery to perform some other duty elsewhere under somebody else's command. If guns had been lost, he could have been redesignated as a rifleman to defend a location whilst the bulk of the Battery moved on. If such occured, the most likely, if not only, place to find such would be in the Battery's War Diary.

Alternatively, he may have become separated involuntarily during the retreat. Something that happened to thousands of BEF troops.

Whether voluntary or involuntary, separation could have occured any time after the shooting started so, unless/until you have confirmation of a specific date, best not to assume it was as late as 29th or so around Dunkirk itself.

If l understand your previous posts, the next positive location is his internment in a cemetary in/on Borkum. Again, unspecified and unknown date.

The narrative of the intervening period is unlikely to be written in any official document unless his movements were part of a group where somebody survived and told their story.

Perhaps a line to follow would be to see if any, and who, was also interned in Bockum and subsequently moved.

 

Nothing pops up on the war diary which stands out unfortunately. I did look at Mr Bush`s CWGC entry to see if there was a clue to anyone who was interred in Borkum cemetery around the same time. This reburial form from 1947 lists several including 3 unknowns around the same dates which were interred in the Lutheran cemetery on Borkum. No clue as to how they got there though. I think it will remain a mystery due to the chaos at the time....

 

2 mins on google got me to this Driver G Singleton | RASC RCT Association

How about 6 BEF troops getting separated from their respective units and finding themselves behind the lines. Make their way to the coast, maybe north of Dunkirk, maybe a good way north if it keeps them from capture, steal a wee boat or a dingy and set off across the North Sea for home.

Unfortunately, didn't make it and boat/bodies wash up on Borkum.

All speculation on my part.

 

Indeed, but its probably close enough to the truth of what happened.
Link is interesting, I wonder how the enquirer ascertained that Dvr Singleton was lost at sea ?
I noticed in the diary for 1AA that Andy provided....
"On the 28th May, one officer and 20 O.R`s from each battery (15th, 16th, 17th) equipped with Bren, anti-tank guns (Boyes ?), and rifles plus 2 days rations, to report at 500942 to man defences on western side of Nieuport canal."
Other than that, the diary reports for the period 28th May to 1st June depict general confusion with a lot of bombing and strafing from enemy on Bray Dunes.
It would be interesting to know where grid reference 500942 was ?

 

Using a link on this forum I managed to find out where 500942 was, almost beside the Nieuport canal (where the red marker is).

 

And using an online colouriser I got this pic....

 

Casualty card....