William Dunbar, RM Commando WW2

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 31/10/2010 01:15:02

I am trying to find out any information on my grandfather, William Dunbar, who served as an officer in the Royal Marine Commandos (I believe) in WW2. Unfortunately he died just after I was born and I have no surviving relatives left on that side of my family.

I remember my grandmother showing me some of his medals when I was a boy and telling me that he had served in Burma amongst other theatres, but that is all.

The only other thing I have left is two pictures of him with other commandos which I have attached here as a JPG. In the first he is centre, kneeling, in the second he is back row, third from left.

Apologies for the little information but I would greatly appreciate any help, or advice where possible.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 16/11/2009 21:36:27

Hi

A very warm welcome to the CVA, you say that your father served in Burma during WWII, as far as I know the only two RM units that served in this theatre of Operations were 42 and 44 RM. They along with No's 1 and 5 Army Commando formed 3 Commando Brigade, I have got copies of a number of magazine / booklets that were published by 3 Commando Brigade for the men of these 4 units, I will have a look through them to see if your G'Father's name is mentioned.
You can also apply for a copy of the service records of an ex-service person, I and quite a few others on this site have already done this, the info that you can receive can either be very detailed or very vague. But it is worth the risk, with the army if you are a relative it only costs £30, however to apply for the records of an RM you would have to apply to the Navy. The following link should take you to the RN site, where you will be able to download the application forms should you wish to have a go yourself.

http://www.veterans-uk.info/service_records/royal_navy.html

Good luck Andy

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 17/11/2009 01:32:12

Hi there
I see you have had some difficulty posting the pictures. We have a fault on our forum at the moment as far as attaching pictures. Your pictures are there they are just not displaying, but can be downloaded. However for others to view more easily I have uploaded them onto our gallery and they are at present housed in the WW2 RM Commando units album. The photos are of good quality. The first photo is on this direct link:
http://www.commandoveterans.org/cdoGallery/v/units/Royal+Marine+Commando+Units/W_D_+-+Commando.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

The second is on this link:
http://www.commandoveterans.org/cdoGallery/v/units/Royal+Marine+Commando+Units/William+dunbar+RM++Commando.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

As your other 5 messages are exact copies of this one made whilst you were attempting to upload the pictures, as a result of the fault, I will delete those so that we have one working message to avoid confusion. Feel free to post any other bits of information that you have no matter how small and i hope you manage to find more about your Grandfather. If you leave your name I will add it to each of the photos you posted

Regards