Messages posted by: Anniek

Does anyone know anything about Benbecula having been used for landing training for early commandos please - before the main commando training was set up.

Thank you

Was talking to my mum earlier and she commented that her father had done an IQ test when he joined the TA in 1939 and then because he had scored so highly some other people were sent to North Wales to do further tests with him.

Any idea why this would have been?

Thank you

Having read on other forums reference to veterans who said they were actually on command raids when their records say they were in hospital I was wondering if this was a common occurrence, does anyone know?

thank you

thanks Nic - his photo is on here http://www.flickr.com/photos/einnaf/

I assume this is just his initial RWF or TA uniform.

thank you.

ok the field thing makes sense - I had naively been thinking field was them being too lazy to write Lichfield so just writing field. I hadn't thought about it being 'out in the field'. Someone on the RWF forum thought it was possible that as 31st battalion was 'home' then he could have been on some sort of coastal defence in Wales which could explain the arrangement of the hospitals he was in and would make sense if he knew the area as well because he was from North Wales.

It is just strange though, why would he make up going to Norway or training in Benbecula? I mean I suppose people did lie about what they had done, especially if they felt they hadn't done anything 'interesting' enough but why invent Norway (and I wouldn't have thought many people would even have HEARD of Benbecula), wouldn't you come up with something more likely/more common? And to have been visibly distressed by Norway things later in life would have been quite an act to put on. He hadn't mentioned Norway at all until then so he had never claimed it straight after the war as a boasting point or anything. He just said he had been there, they had only been on land for a couple of days, dug trenches, were very heavily bombed and he lost friends and were evacuated.

I find it all very fascinating but also quite sad in some ways, I won't ever get the chance to ask him because his life was cut short when he was in his 50s. There aren't any surviving photographs other than his one uniform picture which I assume was right at the start of the war. At least we are lucky though that he survived the war unscathed unlike so many. Some of the stories I am reading online now when people are looking to find out what happened to relatives, where they are buried and so on makes me realise just how lucky my grandparents were.

thank you very much - so any posting to an independent company should have been on there then as we have that form. I really don't understand it then. He only ever mentioned the Norway thing and never said he did any other raids or saw any other action but I just can't see why he would have lied about it, and had the information he did seem to about it all. Plus we have the question then of what he was doing because on reading his record he could have just been sat drinking coffee to be honest but getting promoted and then court marshaled. oh well it sounds like we will never find out.

I appreciate your help.

Could I ask another question please?

If someone WAS attached to one of these independent companies then would their records be held somewhere else? I mean from what I understand they remained as staff of their original company (is that the correct term?) so in this case the RWF but if they were then elsewhere doing things for an independent company then would there be a different set of records for them?

Also does anyone know which commando unit it was where half of them were due to go to India in I believe autumn 1942 but couldn't go due to illness so the other half of the company were sent instead?

Thank you

Thank you Kevin - yes that is my other post on the RWF forum. I still don't understand though how he could have been a commando but with absolutely nothing mentioned in any of his records, or how he was supposedly in one location (Lichfield) but ending up in random hospitals miles and miles away on the north west Wales coast. If he was part of 2 independent company then would this not be somewhere on his army records or is there somewhere else I might find out a bit more about it?

thank you. Nice to see what they look like.

When I collect for the Poppy Appeal I see lots of veterans with their medals on and some have pointed out the more unusual ones but I have never thought to ask which the general ones are.

I would assume they probably got both of those then as they served the whole war.

thank you - I had read somewhere you could claim their medals. 3 of my 4 Grandparents served but all 3 refused their medals. I kind of think I should let it stay as their decision. They said they had only done what everyone else did so didn't want the medals. I would like to see pictures of what they would have been like though.

Do you know what just general standard service medals were called so I can google for a picture?

I suppose the sheer number of these records that must have been completed during the war in so many different places it is inevitable that they will have used their own ones at times and even probably reversed initials around and made little mistakes too, they were only human. My other Grandfather's one has a random name and address on it where they had crossed out his wife at one point in a part of the country he never lived in so obviously someone got two files mixed up.

ah - that makes sense for CRS. thank you - it was one abbreviation I couldn't find anywhere.

I appreciate your help.

I couldn't scan the pages due to the size of them so have photographed them instead, hopefully this link works and they are big enough to be legible.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/einnaf/

I have been asking on the Royal Welch Fusiliers board as well and they think it is perfectly possible that he was part of number 2 Independent company as 8 RWF was a 2nd line TA infantry battalion to provide replacements or reinforcements to its 1st line TA Infantry Brigade '158 RWF' which was deployed in Northern Ireland. It appears he was posted to the 4th RWF within that brigade in Sept 1940.

He could have been trained in the Mourne Mountains whilst over in Ireland? - he did tell my mum they had been 'turned loose in the mountains' for survival training and he had killed a sheep for food.

It is possible his Norway experience was Mosjoen - Bodo area. He mentioned he had been to Narvik to my mum at some point.

If he was RWF but a volunteer for commando duties would there be some other notes for him somewhere do you think? anyone any ideas?

Someone on RWF suggested that the CRS before what we assume are hospital admissions at Bangor, Port Madoc and Abergele could stand for something like Commando Regiment Secondment? Does anyone know what CRS is?

Sorry to have so many questions. Thanks for any ideas.

oh that would be kind - thank you. I will get them off my mum tomorrow and scan them in.

from what he said he missed all the major things due to illness, they missed India with pneumonia and I can't remember the other one but they all had flu and missed it.

the only thing he ever mentioned was Norway.