Can anyone please help me find my information on a soldier who fought in the Second World War please?

[TheHillIsMine]

My friend is 89 and last week she nearly died. She is going to be okay by some miracle and when I saw her today she said she wishes she could find out what happened to her dad. It broke my heart that 84 years after he died, she still sounded so sad about not knowing very much.

I have tried google several times but haven't got very far. There isn't the money for spending on different sites but if there was definitive proof about him, it would be a possibility.

Can anyone advise me please?

@Sherunswithwolves I did think I might have misunderstood so thank you for the clarification. The fact he is remembered on the memorial will mean so much to my friend. I expect it is impossible to know where he was buried. I did tell her yesterday that remains are being found all the time and identified so one never knows. I watched a very moving programme about some in the last couple of years. Thanks again. I a, going today to see her and can't wait to show her all the information you and @SurelyYoureJokingMrFeynman have found for me and therefore her.

I forgot to mention yesterday, most libraries in England (not sure about the devolved countries), have free access to Ancestry on line searches and the larger ones usually have the global version. You may need to pay a nominal fee if you want to print off any information. The staff will help you to get into the site but cannot search for you.

This also looks like an excellent possible source of information, although it requires a paid membership:
The Children (& Families) of the Far East Prisoners of War https://www.cofepow.org.uk/

They have collected a lot of testimony and data, and you'd be in touch with other people in the same position.

Because we have a date of death, well window of two dates, it will probably be possible to work out where the regiment was and what it was doing on those dates.

I'm sure @Sherunswithwolves is already on this!

The sites suggested above might have something useful.

God knows if War Diaries continued to be created among the POWs, or whether these survived. Where any War Diaries that did survive, the original should be in the National Archives and it's possible some organisations may have transcribe them.

That COFEPOW site has some information about the Liberation Questionnaires
https://lq-cofepow.org/ . It also says these are now on Ancestry. These may well be worth looking through, as survivors' testimony often mentions other men.

"It also says these are now on Ancestry. These may well be worth looking through, as survivors' testimony often mentions other men."

Yes, they are on Ancestry. They give a list of all camps or hospitals with dates that they were held at and the name of the camp leader. They also ask for details of others who they saw escaping or performing courageous acts.

The only trouble is that they are only indexed on the person whose record it is. So if, for example, the record for Joe Smith says that the camp leader of the camp he was held at was Major Dobbs then the name "Dobbs" is not indexed and is not searchable.

.

With regard to regimental war diaries, some have been digitised and are available on Ancestry, but many are not. I have a relative who served in Burma and the war diaries have not been digitised, you have to actually go along to the National Archives to view them in person.

What I will say though is that a really fantastic resource I have found is two websites where people ask questions and there are lots of people there with almost encylopedic knowledge of the minutiae of what different regiments and battalions were doing what, when.

One is

https://www.greatwarforum.org

which concentrates on the First World War, and

https://ww2talk.com

which concentrates on the Second World War.

If you have reached a dead end researching somebody who served in either of the two wars then asking for help on either of those two websites really can help a lot.

My friend is amazed at what kind strangers have done for her. She has seen ancestors handwriting and marriage certificate and was very moved.

Unfortunately, she has been diagnosed with arterial defibrillation and while the doctor isn't worried, I am. She was seen by the Professor this morning and he found it.

Was he Royal Navy or Merchant Navy, OP?

@TheSquareMile

He was Royal Navy. Died July 20th 1944. Service number C/JX 704213.

I'm sorry if you already have this information. His ship actually hit a mine rather than was bombed. This was several weeks after the D Day landings.

He was an able-seaman on a destroyer. When it sank, 11 officers and 143 ratings were lost. There were only 20 survivors. The wreck lies in the channel, seven and a half miles north of the French village of Arromanches-les-Bains (about half way between Le Havre and Cherbourg).

I take it that you have some details of his service, if not - as others have already said - you can apply to the National Archives to see his service records, although there is a charge for this.

I'm not sure when he joined the destroyer. There is a record of a person of the same name and same date of birth joining the navy on 17 July 1941 and then being posted to a submarine training flotilla with a rating of Sto ii (Stoker 2nd Class) on 21 November 1941.

It looks like he wasn't successful, as his record says that he failed submarine training on 16 January 1942.

I would guess that it was some time after that, that he was transferred to the destroyer.

The destroyer saw action all over the place during the early years of the war. It was then badly damaged by Japanese air raids in Singapore in early 1942 and was towed to Bombay for repair.

It was then re-commissioned for service in the Mediterranean on 17 January 1943.

So it may be that he may have been stationed at various places during 1942, after his submarine training, and then to the destroyer when it was re-commissioned in 1943. (If you get his records, that will tell you definitvely where he was stationed.

During 1943 and early 1944, the destroyer undertook various missions in the Mediterranean, such as convoy defence (on one occasion it sank a German U boat) and supported Allied landings on Sicily and Anzio.

During the D Day operations the destroyer carried troops of the Durham Light Infantry who were intending to attack one of the beaches.

After that, the destroyer was engaged against some German torpedo boats.

After this, they had five days leave in Portsmouth from 12th to 17th July. So he likely had chance to go back home and see his family at this time.

Then, of course, it sank on the 20th.

Here is a photo of the destroyer (it is the one in the front

Sorry, I forgot to say that the image is copyright the Imperial War Museum,
© IWM (A 7297)

My goodness @Another2Cats . Thank you! My Nana told me me the ship sank and I assumed it was hit. So was it an accident? Somehow that feels better. However, if he hadn't have failed his training he might have survived the war.

Thank you so much. I'll have another read tomorrow when I'm less tired.

BTW my friend came out of hospital on Friday. She's struggling a bit with being home alone rather than in hospital with people around all the time but nurses are going in twice a day and I'm hoping to go on Wednesday. I've been poorly so not able to go yet.

Sorry to hear you've been poorly too, @TheHillIsMine .

Take good care of yourself amid all your taking care of everyone else, won't you?!

BTW I'm a little busy next week smyself o probably won't be able to do much more till the end of the week. So no hurry feeding me info.

The consultant thought I might have been poorly due to being so worried with all that is going on with my friend. I'm not sure it is but also fully accepting it might be.

At present I have no more info I don't think but hope to get some soon.

Thank you for all you've done so far.

Worried update. My friend, who really is as close to a mum I have ever had, is back in hospital. Seems to be something different but I don't know what is going on other than she is waiting for a scan.

I took the paperwork that such lovely and kind posters had found for her and she was so delighted and moved that she could learn new things and that strangers helped another stranger.

Thank you 🌺

He is commemorated on here with his shipmates. There are two survivor accounts, quite graphic so caution advised

www.memorialsinportsmouth.co.uk/churches/cathedral/isis.htm

With regard to regimental war diaries, some have been digitised and are available on Ancestry, but many are not.

I found a WW2 war diary, or part of it, online on someone's own research site. He was researching a relative who had served in that regiment and had transcribed and uploaded part of the diary. My relative wasn't mentioned but it did give a good picture of what he would have experienced.

So it's worth Googling the regiment.

Yes, it's always worth searching for individual regiments.

"...online on someone's own research site. He was researching a relative who had served in that regiment and had transcribed and uploaded part of the diary."

There's a reason that it was transcribed and not an image of the actual war diaries.

Tha National Archives allow you to transcribe and publish on the internet the text of any documents in The National Archives for free.

But if you want to put an actual image from a page of the war diaries on a website then there is a fee of £40 plus VAT which covers between one and twenty images.

My DH also has a small little site where he has also put up some transcriptions of the undigitised War Diaries of a particular regiment.

Back in 2023 he went down to The National Archives in London and photographed all the pages of one particular regiment's war diary. He wanted to put some of them up on a website but was told that there was a fee for doing this, so he is gradually transcribing them as and when he has the time.

Thank you so much. I've printed off to read properly.

Just to say my friend is back in hospital as of yesterday and has been once before since all this. I think four times in total so far. Seems like the hospital are just giving her pain relief and not investigating enough imo. So worried.

Thank you all.