Tomorrow would have been my father’s 91st
birthday. So it is quite serendipitous that in the mail today I received a copy
of his military record that I ordered more than twelve months ago.
It looks like the record is made up of several
different documents and I guess it will take me some time to decipher all the
details on his service record, and the abbreviations on them, and understand what
they mean. Thankfully it does come with a list of the meaning of common
abbreviations.
The basic details are that the enlisted 19 June 1941,
he would have been nineteen. The documents give me his address, where he would
have been living with my grandparents.
When he was on ten days embarkation leave he and my
mother married on February twenty-first 1942. They married by special licence.
This was, I think, because here was no time for the banns to be read in the
local church.
He was sent to India 16 March 1942, and returned to
England 23 April 1944. As to where he
was during the remainder of the war until he was discharged that I have yet to fully
interpret.
Some of it looks as though he may have been in
hospital as there are several entries with what looks like the word hospital alongside
them.
I think he requested to be released from
the regular army in February 1944 and became part of the Army reserve, and was
finally completely discharged in December 1950.
I’ll keep you posted, but don’t hold your breath as
it might take a visit to the Army Museum to fully get to the bottom of it all
.
I was going to write about something else entirely,
but Dad’s record is much more interesting
Now,
where did I put that magnifying glass…
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