Finding out about my father's war service

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!