Finding out about my father's war service

The genealogy site Find My Past has free access to military records for a few days. www.findmypast.co.uk/pals

Ancestry has a similar offer. www.ancestry.co.uk/c/remembrance-day

Good luck - genealogy can be very addictive!

You can apply for the service record but it may take a long time and what you find isn’t going to tell you much, if anything, about his personal experience.

www.gov.uk/get-copy-military-records-of-service/apply-for-the-records-of-a-deceased-serviceperson

If you haven’t already done so, it would probably be better to read generally about the subject first, about the Malayan Campaign. Wiki is a good a place as any to start.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Singapore

You might also read The Battle For Singapore: The true story of the greatest catastrophe of World War II by Peter Thompson

www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Singapore-story-greatest-catastrophe/dp/0749950994?tag=gransnetforum-21

Once you have a feel for what went on, you can then use the National Archives to go deeper, perhaps to get access to correspondence, dispatches, diaries etc.

Luckygirl3 my Father was much the same; the horrors caused a deep mental wound, and he spoke of what he had been ordered to do only weeks before he died. He knew that he had killed young men like himself - he was a gunner in the 8th Army and was at El - Alemein. Dad would not send for his medals, but I applied to the War Office for them, probably forty years after his death.

Same with my father & my partner's father not wanting to discuss the war, although my dad would recall all the humourous stuff that happened. I think in hindsight they had PTSD & self medicated with alcohol after seeing the horrors of El-Alemein, Cassino, Anzio. My partner is currently tracking down his dad's military service records as a marine commando. You can apply online under the FOI as per PaynesGrey's link. You'll need your father's death certificate most probably.

My father was not called up in WWII but my FIL was and I think, along with many others, it ruined his life.

He refused to talk about it but he was forced to give up his quiet life as a clerk in a sleepy seaside town. Then he had to bear arms and kill or be killed and witness men around him being killed. All this was clearly deeply traumatising. He, and numerous others were never able to pick up the threads of normal civilian life again.

And yet they literally soldiered on, building the country up again, working and raising families in the fifties. Certainly for my Father's family of six brothers, they were presumably so grateful to have come home alive and at least physically unscathed, that I can always remember Dad and my five uncles as good natured men always ready for laughter, who were kind to the family's children. It was only when I became an adult that I appreciated the price they paid and the burdens they carried privately.

Yes we have done it, but as he was a Commando, not all of his records were released to us.

My father was never called up in WW2 although he was fit and healthy all he would say when I asked was well I worked in and out af the ports delivering stuff but wouldn't elaborate. Could that of been a reserved occupation or could he be delivering arms etc? Just puzzled why he wouldn't be called to fight.

My father was mainly in North Africa during the war. He never really spoke about it, didn't pay any attention to Rememberance Day, I think he thought it was all too mawkish and he certainly never wore a poppy. I don't think he was one for looking back more for moving forward. I did find a letter of his, written to my grandmother during the war years to say he was in Palestine which was quite descriptive. When my mother died, going through cupboards, I found his medals in a little brown cardboard box with his address on it, the house I always visited my grandparents in. Also a photograph album with some pictures of him in uniform in North Africa with a desert backdrop. The only thing he ever passed on about being there was an enduring hatred of sand, that came out whenever we were on a beach. My mother told me he caught hepatitis in Libya and was very ill, not that they'd even met at the time. In later years she often spoke about her time working in London during the blitz, I think she quite enjoyed talking about war time memories.

Yes I did it, my father did not talk about, like many but my siblings wanted to know. He died a long time ago and only after my mother died did I take up the challenge

I was the eldest child so was the only one who was allowed to obtain the information. I obtained his full service record and also his medals, which he never wanted. I put the details into a book I made for the family and handed the medals to a DD who had been an army major.

I have nothing in my possession now, apart from the book

You will need to find out the name of the office which deals with the service history of whatever branch of the forces your father was in. I knew the name of my father`s regiment and that was a great help

My father wouldn't talk about his war service either.

However, he did write some things down in diary form and I really should bring myself to read them now.

Terribull my day was a volunteer and served from 1939 through to the end of the war. He too never wore a poppy and did not think much at all of the symbolism

My father fought in WW1 and was too old to be called up for WW2. He was a fire watcher instead. He was in India for some time. It seems incredible now to think that he was part of such a war torn era.

My father fought in WW2, after his death we came across his medals and a variety of papers. We have a wonderful Olive wood bound photo album of his time in North Africa. Photos of him sitting on the Sphinx! A couple of Churchill and Montgomery visiting. You’d think he was on holiday.
None of this was ever talked about.

My father, born 1910, had a relatively easy war. He was in searchlights to begin with, but later, as a professional classical musician, was given a motorbike, a wind-up gramophone and a pile of records. He was told to go and give lecture recitals at military stations around the South coast. And at Capel le Ferne in April 1944 there was a pretty WAAF, who was actually doing very secret intelligence work, and who went along to hear this scruffy soldier tell the station about Mozart and Beethoven.
They were married in August and I was born in July 1945.

PS I still have a box of records: Property of ENSA. (Entertainments National Service Association)

I found out more detail when Dad turned 80. He wouldn’t ever talk about it before then. Honestly it made me want to cry. He was a navigator and saw many of his friends killed and got shot down a couple of times. Horrendous and I am very, very anti war . I wish I had known sooner, it explained a lot of things from my childhood - I think he was quite traumatised but in those days no one recognised PTSD.

I found a lot about my grandfathers who both served in WW1 by getting in touch with their regiments. Many servicemen kept war diaries and regimental archives are full of information. They are usually free too.

My father never ever spoke of the war but he stayed on as a regular officer afterwards.
I don’t wear a poppy and think war is wicked and shameful, not something to be celebrated every year. We don’t remember Agincourt or the Norman conquest with flags and bands. The terrible wars of the last century should be consigned to history too.

watermeadow

My father never ever spoke of the war but he stayed on as a regular officer afterwards.
I don’t wear a poppy and think war is wicked and shameful, not something to be celebrated every year. We don’t remember Agincourt or the Norman conquest with flags and bands. The terrible wars of the last century should be consigned to history too.

'The terrible wars of the last century should be consigned to history too.'
@ Watermeadow. This is the first year I have felt the same. I come from a military family going back generations and was brought up on King and Country. This year, I was sad and probably think the same way as the veteran who said what was it all for when you look at the state of the country now. But, it is no longer my world and it belongs to those younger than I am to do with as they will.

I’ve been tracing my family and my paternal grandfather was in the RN during the WW1. I’ve been able to follow his navel record by the ships he was on until he DAR!😮 “did a runner” whilst in the Caribbean. He ended up in Toronto with his wife’s (my grandmother) best friend!

watermeadow

My father never ever spoke of the war but he stayed on as a regular officer afterwards.
I don’t wear a poppy and think war is wicked and shameful, not something to be celebrated every year. We don’t remember Agincourt or the Norman conquest with flags and bands. The terrible wars of the last century should be consigned to history too.

Remembrance Day is not about celebrating war, it is about remembering those who dies for their country

My father was in the RN and very lucky to survive 2 years of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Later he was in the far East and took part in the last action against Japan. I heard him speak just once about taking skeletal prisoners from Changi jail on to his ship.

That was the only time I ever heard him mention anything about the war. In general he was a very jolly, cheerful type, so I dare say nhe just wanted to forget it.

If the film the Cruel Sea ever came on the TV, he wouldn't watch it - too close to home. He’d served on a ship with the author of the book, Nicholas Montserrat, and said he was ‘a shit’!

Somewhere I have the notification of when he was ‘mentioned in dispatches’.

My stepfather was one of those skeletal prisoners that were released from Changi jail. He was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore, but never ever talked about his time there. Nothing Japanese was allowed into our house for very many years, until we finally did have a Sony coloured TV in the early 1980's! After he died, I had great difficulty in finding out anything about the retreat and him, but I was fortunate that someone in Canada saw my family tree on Ancestry, got in touch and was able to fill me in with certain information. However their relative was torpedoed on the way back to Japan and killed. My SF was sent back to Singapore and survived. My father was killed in Bomber Command in 1942. He's been much easier to discover. Service records do give a fairly good picture + various military sites.
I wear my poppy with great pride each year. It is certainly not a celebration of war and all its horrors, but a recognition, and a thank you to all those who fell or were badly affected by both those wars and subsequent conflicts. My grandfather fought in France from 1915-1918, entering Flanders in 1915 aged just 22. He survived, though gassed and shell shocked. These brave young men and thousands like them, should never be forgotten.🌺