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The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.
Announcements
- 1st of September 2024 marks 25 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time.
- The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 25 years. If you would like to support us, a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting and admin or this site will vanish from the web.
- 19th Nov 2024 - Please note we currently have a huge backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than
264989 your information is still in the queue, please do not resubmit, we are working through them as quickly as possible.
- Looking for help with Family History Research?
Please read our Family History FAQs
- The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.
If you enjoy this site
please consider making a donation.
Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the War? Our
Library contains an ever growing number diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text. |
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Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to WW2. We would like to obtain digital copies of any documents or photographs relating to WW2 you may have at home. If you have any unwanted
photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them.
The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted.
World War 1 One ww1 wwII second 1939 1945 battalion
Did you know? We also have a section on The Great War. and a
Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.
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Want to know more about 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers? There are:1395 items tagged 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War. |
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Pte. William Kaighin 1st Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers  What follows is all that I managed to get from my father, William Kaighin but it does not line up with the RSF war diary which leaves me to believe that my father did not go with the original battalion. Please can someone help me with any information or clarification or where I can get it as the regiment has been no help?
I was called up and sent to Maidstone then Inverness with the 1st Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers. Picked up the 2nd Battalion in Poona, India. Train at Bombay to Chittagong which took a week. Boat from there to Calcutta for about a day-no post. Calcutta to an island called Akkyack but cancelled at last minute and sent to northern India to Arakan which was jungle then on to Margarita-Burma-Opong.
Flew in Dakota. Yanks captured it and gave it to the Chinese who left it on fire when we got there. We were there 13 months then walked to Mandalay. Then into hospital with malaria, scrub typhus, jungle sores and dysentry, flown out by Jackie Gleeson in a Dakota, on patient per wing, Gave us mepracrin tablets every day. Young guy next to me in bed, about 22 or 23 died one night and I did not know until the morning. He had malaria of the spine which you catch from the female mosquito, the male does not bite. I went into the doctors one day and stole 500 mepracrin tablets. A friend was bending down behind a tree going to the toilet and did not know that a Jap was doing the same the other side. Friend was the first to pull up his trousers and killed the Jap.
Any prisoners taken were killed as there was not enough food for us. In any case it was too far to take them back. They treated us the same. If you discharged your rifle without coming up with a body you went on a charge of 14 days.
I was frightened on the ship going over cause you are locked below.
They gave me a week's leave then it was off to Inverness standing all the way from London. I arrived, signed in and then the sergeant took me for a 5 mile run. I was one of the oldest at 34.
Ruby Sparkes was in our lot. He was a London crook, the first man to break out of Dartmoor. He decided to get out of the Army. We all got a 48 hour pass to go to a boxing match and Ruby put his name down for one of the fights. On the way to the match he said cheerio and was never seen again.
Saw Vera Lynn in Chittagong. She moved the officers out of the front seats and put the soldiers there. Mountbatton gave us a talk. It was all bullshit but boosted our morale. He could swear worse than me.
The ship we went out on was the Wiiem Roose along with an American boat called the Maritz. The Maritz was torpedoed with about 2000 troops on board. I helped my mate called Chota Small out of the water.
We gave our underwear away to villagers for food.
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Fus. Peter J H Bowles 2nd Btn. Royal Scots Fusiliers (d.30th May 1944) Peter Bowles was uncle to my wife Corrine and her sisters Donna and Darlene, but as they were all born after 1947 they never met him. They heard from his brother Jack and his sister Joan (my mother in law) how wonderful this man was. Joan worked in an ammunition factory near by where she lived. Peter as a young man wanted to help and joined the Army, his brother Jack was too young and was schooled through the war, keeping his Mom busy. I was lucky to meet his mother (my wife's grand mother) her stories were always memorable, his father was a head purser in the Merchant Navy during the war. We are all in Canada and we do appreciate the use of the Internet that basically helped us to research Fusilier Peter Bowles. From looking at archives he was killed during the German withdrawal from Italy on 30th of May 1944, he was 19. Several week later a small note typed and signed by the King arrived by Royal Mail announcing the sad news. His superior officer was also badly wounded and apologized to the family for writing the letter 6 months later as he was not able to do it any sooner due to his wounds. We plan to go to visit his grave in Anzio Italy this next fall 2018 to pay our respect and thank him for his service. We must never forget all those men.
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Lt. Thomas Finlay MacConnachie 6th Battalion, D Coy. Royal Scots Fusiliers My father Thomas MacConnachie landed in France in 1944 and fought at Caen, Falaise and through France into Belgium. He was taken prisoner after an assault across the Albert Canal near Escaut on the same day as Operation Market Garden was launched. He was a platoon commander tasked with setting up a consolidation in the village of Aart (now Ten Aart) when they were overwhelmed by a German counter attack. Fortunately he was captured by Wermacht troops (Herman Goering Elite) and avoided the SS who he had bitter experience of confronting. I understand that the action was to consolidate the port of Antwerp and diversionary in relation to Market Garden.
My father continued to serve in the Army until he retired in 1974, suffered a massive haemorrhagic stroke in 1976 and died in 1987. My mother celebrates her 93rd birthday this December having been widowed for the past 32 years. My father's commission certificate, swagger stick and pass out photograph from OCTU still have pride of place on the wall of her home.
My father's Prisoner of War Log is still treasured by the family.
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Sgt. John Lyle Dawson 1/2 Btn. Royal Scots Fusiliers John Dawson served in Burma.
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Fus. H. Cameron 2nd Btn. Royal Scots Fusiliers On 28 January 1944, during World War II, the Orvieto North railway bridge at Allerona, Italy, was the site of the inadvertent bombing by the American 320th Bombardment Group of a train filled with Allied prisoners. Most of the POWs had come from Camp P.G. 54, Fara in Sabina, 35 kilometres to the north of Rome, and had been evacuated in anticipation of the Allied advance. One of the men on the train, Richard Morris of the U.S. Army, wrote that the train was halted on the bridge over the river when the Allied bombs started to fall, and that the German guards fled the train, leaving the prisoners locked inside. Many escaped, Morris included, through holes in the boxcars caused by the bombing, and jumped into the river below. Historian Iris Origo wrote that 450 were killed when the cars ultimately tumbled into the river.
He was captured at Garigliano. He survived the wreck uninjured. He was sent to Stalag 344 Lamsdorf
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Fus. Henry Cummings 2nd Btn. Royal Scots Fusiliers My Father-in-law, Henry Cumings served as a boy soldier and when war broke out he went to France with the BEF but was returned home prior to Dunkirk for medical reasons. We also know he served in India having enlisted at Carlisle 10th November 1921.
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