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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.
- 18th Dec 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
265120 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 153rd Highland Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps? There are:484 items tagged 153rd Highland Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps 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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Medic Alan Moore 153rd (Highland) Field Ambulance My father, Alan Moore, was a medic with 153 Field Ambulance. He was captured at St Valery and marched on foot to the Zeider Zee in Holland then onto coal barges to Torun in Poland. He is still alive at the ripe old age of 97. In France he was driving an ambulance to the front, picking up the wounded and driving them to the field hospital at St Valery.
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Pte. Thomas Finnigan 154th Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps Thomas Finnigan joined up on 7th November 1939, training at RAMC Depot Crookham Camp (Near Aldershot) from 7th November 1939 to 30th January 1940. He was attached to 154th Field Ambulance in the BEF which was part of 51st Highland Division.
They shipped to France on 31st January 1940. From 28th March, 51HD were deployed on a defensive line between Bailleul and Armentieres. From April 51HD moved to the Saar front in area of Hombourg-Budange.
On 10th May the Germans invaded Belgium. 51HD fought around Grossenwald.
On 20th May 51HD moved to Etian and Varennes, where they were cut off from the rest of BEF. 51HD then to hold line along Somme from Erondelle to sea.
On 4th June the Germans attacked Abbeville and forced 51HD back to the river Bresle, where supply lines were cut. 51HD was ordered to fall back to Bethune. The plan was to evacuate 51HD, but because they were unable to use Dieppe, the decision was made to use Le Havre.
On 9/10th June Ark force (154 Brigade) split off from 51HD to break through to defend Le Havre. They took up a defensive position from Fecamp to Lillebonne and so were not encircled like the rest of 51HD. The rest of 51HD attempted to vacuate through St Valery en Caux, but were surrounded and taken prisoner. We assume that Dad was with Ark force.
(He told Tommy once that they were in a copse near Dunkirk and they sent three trucks to try and break through. He went on one of the trucks. Tommy asked him how come he'd gone - because one of the other chaps on the lorries had a bottle of whisky).
He returned to the UK on 9/10th June 1940 and was transferred back to 153rd Field Ambulance.
His war record reads:
He came back to the UK on 14/1/46
and was demobbed on the 26/3/46.
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A/Sgt. John Bramley Mellor 153rd Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps John Mellor served with No.153 Field Ambulance and was involved with helping displaced persons after the cessation of hostilities and father stayed in the RAMC overseas until 1946. In the family album there are photographs from on the Baltic when the war ended, printed from some negatives he brought back. I remember him saying that there were hundreds of bodies in the sea from German ships carrying refugees that had been sunk by Russian submarines. I subsequently saw a TV programme describing this incident. The Wilhelm Gustloff, one of the ships sunk, was carrying over 10,000 of which few survived.
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L/Cpl Alistair Crawford Cameron MacRitchie 153rd Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps My father Alister MacRitchie was captured on the cliff top at St.Valery-en-Caux with the 51st Highland Division on the 12th of June 1940. He was marched, trucked, marched, trained, barged, and trained again (32 hours, 50 men to a truck, with no water) to Stalag XXA in Thorn in Poland where he worked on various work details in satellite camps. As he was "protected personnel", being a medical orderly, he was repatriated through Sweden in October 1943 as part of the first successful prisoner exchange with the Germans.
My Dad (far right) with his two pals, Allan Cameron and Archie Day, "The Three Musketeers" or "The Three Must Get Beers", who were in his unit and were captured with him. 
This is a German photo of my Dad and others at one of the satellite camps. My Dad swears that the faces in the photographs had been touched up to make everyone look fatter and healthier than they really were.
Alan Moore, who was a fellow POW of my father's at one of the camps, was recently featured on The Antiques Roadshow, Remembrance Day Special recounting the story of the radio that was smuggled in and operated in the camp (he still has the radio). My Dad's story, transcribed from his own handwritten notes and POW diaries, is recounted in "Chrismas in the Lager - Worse than a Sunday" available from www.blurb.com.
The following are fellow POWs with their POW numbers whom he listed in his diary:
- Cameron, A. 18476
- McPherson 18536
- MacRitchie, A 18702
- Chapman 17238
- Bridges, A. 50131
- Hawley 18502
- Drake, D. 50130
- Elliott, A. 13785
- Case, G. 50136
- Bynes 18313
- Lait, W. 15225
- Tucker
- Young, G. 16995
- McKenzie 11244
IN HOSPITAL
- Moran, W. 18262
- McKenzie 16904
- Smith, J. 18171
- Underwood
- Henry, A. 18408
- Small
- Kennedy 18185
- McFarlane
- Castle, N. 18254
- Woods 17244
- Steven, C. 18545
- Borne 18272
- Ross, T. 15149
- Firth 17074
- Smith, A.V. 15230
- Masters
- McQueen 18387
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Sgt. Graham William Porter Reid 153rd (Highland) Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps I have recently read papers belonging to my late father, Graham W P Reid who was captured at St Valery. He was in the 153rd (Highland) Field Ambulance RAMC(T) and a POW in Stalag XXa from June 1940 - January 1945. He was Camp Commandant and I have lists of many who were with him during that time and a diary of the time when they were released.
Like so many, he talked little in the 50s and 60s,except with local POWs in Aberdeen, but did begin to tell stories to our two sons in later years. I have read many of the stories from folk on this site, but have yet to find how to see the photos. Like one person says, he spoke of Camp plays with Sam Kydd.
I would so love to hear from others whose parents and grandparents may have been there with him and who might appear in his letters or on the lists.
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