Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Saturday, 2 March 2013

The mystery of history...



Nice to not to have to get up too early. 

The Man is feeling a tad under the weather today, he’s been fighting off the dreaded lurgey for a couple of days. So I left him snoozing when I got up to read. 

And what am I reading, well right now the book is called ‘The Return of Captain John Emmett’. It’s a WWII novel . Actually set after the end of the war. It is about a young widow who enlists the help of a pre-war acquaintance to find out why it was that her husband survived the war only to kill himself in peacetime. Several of the books I’ve read recently are set in that timeframe. 

My father served in WWII. He served with the Essex Regiment. Enlisting at Woolwich on 19 June 1941, and was placed in the ROAC No. 1 Training Battalion.

Dad transferred to REME on 1 October 1942, which was the date REME was formed, it was common for RAOC (Royal army Ordinance Corps) men to be transferred to REME.

He embarked for India 16 March 1942, obviously by sea, arriving in India 11 may 1942 a journey that took almost two months. Now that raises the question of what him and the other soldiers would have done on board ship, and where about in India they landed. 

I thought he had spent most of his time in India, but by the look of his record he was there for 2 years and 2 months, then spent the remain 2 years and eleven months back in the UK.

I remember him telling me that he had been sick and spent some time convalescing. And I have a couple of has pieces of handiwork that he made during this time. 

Another thing that I didn’t know about him was that he went AWOL twice! Oh how I wish he was here for me to ask about that!

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