Here are a couple of photos of my mother as my commemoration of this important chapter in World War 2. My mother was a member of the ATS and was assigned to early radar detection and the prediction of enemy aircraft movement. She passed German aircraft positions to the gun sites - also 'manned' by women of the ATS.

Above: Mum - top row center - and some of her fellow ATS aniti-aircraft site comrades.

Mum - Connie - was based in South Shields and at Crystal Palace during the raids and it's interesting to think that during this phase of the war just how heavily involved female members of our armed forces were in the actual defence of the country - The Blitz being to all intense and purposes a front line battle.

Above: Mum and some of her comrades - ATS veterans - posing in front of a British 3.5 inch anti-aircraft gun during a regimental re-union in 2002.

> The BBC - Service at St Paul's to remember the Blitz 70 years on

Women were barred from serving in battle, but due to shortages of men, ATS members, as well as members of the other women's voluntary services, took over many support tasks, such as radar operators, forming part of the crews of anti-aircraft guns and military police. However, these roles were not without risk, and there were, according to the Imperial War Museum, 717 casualties during WW2. [Wikipedia]

My father - John Beat - served in stores and supply for 14 BSD (Base Supply depot) of the RASC (Royal Army Service Corps) as part of the 8th Army in North Africa from 1941-45.

PAGE 1 - 'TAKEN IN BOMBAY 9th AUGUST 1940'

On the left is my father and on the right his best friend Fred. I am unsure why they started in Bombay, when they ended up in Egypt, but once I have my father's service record I hope to clarify this.

I made a rather unsettling discovery last night regarding some war time photographs we have in our possession. My father - who served with the British 8th Army in North Africa - brought home some photos that were 'liberated' from their German owner (as my dad was not a front line soldier, but in supplies, I guess that he traded some goodies for them).

My father displayed his 'trophies' in one of his albums, and they were of some novelty interest as they showed some German soldiers during what - we presumed - was the early war Blitzkrieg in, judging by the architecture, Poland. Obviously the German owner was subsequently transferred to the Afrika Corps and then was either captured or worse and the photos confiscated.

However, this weekend my mother - during a fit of Spring cleaning - found an additional three photos in the series that had been left out of my dad's album. Initially they seemed of little interest, being faint and not showing any of the German soldiers that were in the other photos, hence their exclusion from the album.

But on examining them I found a title written in pencil on the back of one of them - it said 'Stryj' or 'Stryi' So, interested to see if this would finally unearth the location of the scenes in the photos I quickly Googled the word and was rewarded by an immediate result - sadly I was not prepared for what I found...

"The Germans occupied Stryy on July 2, 1941, and hundreds of Jews were immediately killed. In November 1941, 1,200 Jews were shot in the Holobotow forest. Several depotations to extermination camps took place beginning in September, 1942. Between June and August of 1943 the Stryy ghetto and labor camps near the town were liquidated. When the Soviet army occupied Stryy in August, 1944 there were only a few Jewish survivors. No Jewish community was re-established." http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/stryy/

To be honest I was a little shocked! Up until now these photos had been no more than novel memorabilia, but the true history behind the scenes placed a far more gruesome and horrifying significance on them...

Above: One of the excluded photos that recently came to light - this shows some of the homes in the town of Stryi in flames as the Nazis carry out operations against the defenseless Jewish community.

Ironically, it is in two of the photos that were excluded from my father's album that one can get some sense of the horror that unfolded in the town of Stryi as they show the destruction and burning of some of the homes there. I am sure my father was completely unaware of the significance of the photos and left the remaining three out of his album simply because he thought they were the least interesting.

I now feel very uncomfortable about these photos and am not entirely sure what to do with them. They are now, of course, more important in a historical sense and I am tempted to hang on to them so I can pass them down to my daughters so they have a sense of the Holocaust. But in another way I don't want to have them, knowing now the sadistic motives behind their taking and am looking into perhaps donating them to a Jewish historical archive.

Link to all seven photos in this series on my Flickr album

1. Service records application - what I need first
To begin my project it would be ideal if I could get hold of my parents military service records, but in order to do this there are some details I need about them in order to apply for these records.

To recieve the service records I must first of all prove who I am, and also provide as much information about my Mum and Dad as I can to successfully retrieve the required information about their military service. I do this by filling out the Certificate of Kinship. ** It is worth knowing that you have to either be the service person themselves, next of kin or an interested party with the consent of the service person to be able to get hold of these records. **

Next I need to fill in the SAR (Subject Access Request) form, this gives the record body (Navy, Army, Air Force, etc) all the information they require to do the search, and you also need to be specific about what sort of information you want - like medical records while serving of HMS 'X', or whatever.

To fill in the SAR I will need specific details about my parents - like name, rank and service number. I will also need to know what unit, regiment or formation they belonged to. This will require that I, in the first case, simply ask my Mum for her details, but my Dad's details will have to be gathered from his Army Pay Book (which currently resides at a local war museum).

> So - 'To Do' number 1:-

1. Phone my Mum and ask her about her service details
2. Contact the local museum and request the return of my father's Army Pay Book

Next post: In my next post in this series I will collate all the information, show you where to get the appropriate forms and go through the form filling process...

Above: The display boards with my mum and dad's photos - highlighted in red. Mum is part of the 'Unsung Heroes and Heroines' display, while dad can be found in the 'North Africa' section.

It's really nice to see my parent's photos surrounded with other people that either in the same service or maybe they may have even known. It was also very touching that many families brought their children along and would point out to them 'grandad' or 'grandma'.

Above: Close-up of mum and dad - surrounded by 'old pals'!

While dad passed away a number of years ago, mum was happy to hear that her photo is still displayed at Eden Camp. And while in her 80s mum still shows an interest in her days in the army, as this week she meet some other fellow women veterans for a small reunion dinner.

My father served with the Royal Army Service Corps (what we would now know as logistics) as part of the 8th Army in North Africa. The role of his unit was to keep the units at the front line supplied with food and other supplies by managing the mountains of stores and the trucks that transported them.

Right: Dad recorded the menu served to the members of his unit, Christmas 1943. It seems a pretty good one, and certainly not what the troops at the front were probably eating. Click on the picture to see a larger version. 

Despite this being a 'second line' roll, military historians will appreciate that it was logistics and the flow of supplies that in the end played a vital part in victory in North Africa.

Above: The men - and dogs! - of the 14 Base Supply Depot, Royal Army Service Corp, 1943. My father is on the second row, sixth from the left.

I am not entirely sure about the location of this Christmas meal, though from 1942 my father and his unit seem to have been stationed in or near Alexandra, and maybe at a petrol depot at Mersa Matruh - but I cannot confirm this.

14 BSD and the sort of work they did are - I believe - mentioned in chapter 11 of a book called, appropriately, 'Petrol Company' by A. L. Kidson. An electronic version of this chapter - Back to the ‘Blue’ - is available online at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, and it gives an account of the fighting around Mersa Matruh and the part played my 14 BSD.

Left: Photo my father included of the venue of the unit's Christmas meal. This looks more like a building in a larger city - like Alexandria - than in Mersa Matru, which was just a small harbour town.

 This particular Christmas celebration must have been quite a significant one for the troops of the 8th Army, for while the war still raged on the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered on May 13, 1943. This victory, along with that of our Soviet allies at Stalingrad in February 1943, marked a turning of the tide against Germany and it's allies. From here on in, Germany was on the defensive.

MENU

Soup 'Minestrone'
Roast Turkey
Roast Pork - Apple Sauce
Roast Potatoes
Assorted Vegetables
Christmas Pudding - Rum Sauce
Mince Pies - Oranges - Nuts - Sweets
Tea - Coffee
Beer & Cigarettes

Looking at the menu, I can't help feeling how lucky my Dad probably was - although, by this time, he and his comrades had earned it. But it would be interesting to compare this rather luxurious war time menu with that being enjoyed at the home front - what with the strict rationing (I will ask my mum about this) - much less what our Soviet ally would have had to make do with!

Useful links:-

> 'Christmas 1943: A Meal Interrupted' - menu aboard the U.S.A.T. Evangaline, 1943
> BBC 'WW2 People's War' - Christmas in Italy 1943 by Peter G Whiting
> Russian Rations of The Great Patriotic War By Knackerstaff

> The Wartime Memories Project - The Royal Army Service Corps
> The Royal Army Service Corp entry on Regiments.org
> Back to the 'Blue' - account mentioning the 14 BSD at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre