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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 624th Field Park Company, Royal Engineers? There are:485 items tagged 624th Field Park Company, Royal Engineers 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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CQMS. Robert Taylor 505th Field Company Royal Engineers    Bob Taylor enlisted from the Territorial Army aged eighteen when he weighed just 9st 11 lbs. He turned down the offer of being enrolled into the Officer programme and entered the Second World war having been made up to the rank of Corporal in June 1939.
He had been mobilised as a sapper in the 505th Field Company Royal Engineers, from a period in the TA in April 1939, and had gained his first promotion whilst on the fifteen days annual training at Lancaster.
He took part in the British Expeditionary Force that was sent to France on the 28th January 1940 before being taken off the beaches at Dunkirk on the 1st June 1940.
He remembered seeing himself and his comrades on pathe newsreel footage coming up a gangway which he saw many years later. Later he was promoted again to CQMS and seems to have been and posted to the 624th Field Park Company and he spent a year and five months in Germany with them.
He wasn't demobbed from the Royal Engineers until March 1946, having been their interpreter and celebrating his 21st birthday aboard a ship en route to Aden. On the board ship Bob had taught groups of soldiers how to tie knots and conversational German during the very long sea voyage they endured on the way to the Middle East. He achieved the rank of sergeant and was then awarded the warrant officer post of CQMS having survived Tobruk and El Alamein. After France he was posted to Egypt, Cyprus, North Africa, Palestine, Iraq and then Germany till the end of the war.
The stories he told matched much of Private Louvain's fabulous diary, my father talked of being the regiments interpreter as he spoke good French and German, even down to the scattering in the waddies, where he went one way as his driver had been shot in the arm, and his mate Stuart Ettles went the other and was captured, only to escape from a train in Italy some months later. His photos show him during various stages of the war. The main photo I have does not have a record of whether this was 505th or 624th Field Coy.
We know that during WWII Bob and his mate Stuart Ettles had been in the same unit of the Royal Engineers the 505th Field Coy. and were in the desert together when surprised by German patrols, they were separated by their decision to go in opposite directions in their attempt to avoid the enemy. (the extract even mentions the situation) Ettles choice ended up with him being captured and held as a POW whilst Bob escaped. They had been in different trucks, Bob's driver was shot in the arm and he had to take over the controls, Ettles was caught and later escaped after he picked the lock of a goods truck whilst traveling through Italy by train, he found refuge on a farm and spent the rest of the war up in the hills with an Italian family who sheltered him.
Until 1988 he held the photographic record of the unit, and on the day of his funeral it was passed on to another old soldier from the same unit who had attended the church.
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