RootsChat.Com

In case you may not have noticed, may I point you in the direction of a thread I started: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=871587.0

I have been looking into my father's RAF record - he was also a wireless operator and it sounds as if your father was doing pretty much the same thing as my father did.  I remember him telling me that he had additional training in Japanese Morse Code amongst other things.  Most of his time was spent in India and Burma, although he also went to Singapore and Malaya and ended up in Hong Kong.

You need to get his service record, although unfortunately only the index cards survive, so you only get some basic information and you will have to piece together a lot of it yourself.  You will also find that a forum such as this is an invaluable tool in your research.

Jim

Colour blind?  Whether it was a criteria they used or not, he wasn’t colour blind, so we can forget about that possibility.  After his release from service, he completed his studies and was awarded a Diploma of Art from Dundee Art College and a Diploma of Education and spent his working life as a secondary school art teacher, first in Scotland and, from 1959, in Australia.  As I sit here at the computer, I have four of his paintings in the room, and they are, I think, evidence that his colour vision was not impaired.

The whole thing gets, to quote Lewis Carroll, curiouser and curiouser.  It’s a pity that the records that could give us the answer no longer exist.  Was it some odd thing he said during one of the aptitude tests that maybe led them to say this, or was it possibly something that marked him out as someone who might be more of an asset performing the sort of work that was undertaken in 367 and 368 Wireless Units?

He never said anything to me about the enlistment process (or for that matter, much about the war itself, although he did talk about the places he had been) so I don’t even know if he even wanted to be flying or not.

Jim

Thanks for that, Ross.  In that case we can forget about the second line of that entry, as it isn't going to lead us anywhere, and I'll get back to working on the only remaining document we have.

That third line intrigues me though......

Jim

Yes, Ross, I was given a list of common abbreviations with the record, but not everything used appears to be common, and the poor handwriting on the index card doesn't help.

Looking back, I can see that MU is Maintenance Unit and not Mobile Unit - a mistake on my part.  It would have been handy being posted to Edzell - my father came from Brechin, about eight miles down the road.......

And here’s where I have got to:

Recruited into RAFVR, Edinburgh 20 December 1941.  3RC - 3rd recruitment centre maybe?

10(S)RC- other than the RC probably standing for recruitment centre I have no idea what it means.

2 Signals School - would be the training undertaken at Blackpool from 2 July 1942

44 Mobile Unit, Edzell, as of 22 October 1942

Newbold Revel (RAF wireless training subsequent to his training in Blackpool) - from 19 May 1943

350 Signals Depot - was this the unit he was in while stationed at Newbold Revel?

1 Personnel Despatch Centre (Sup.) - I don’t know what the significance of “1” is, nor do I know what “Sup.” stands for, but this is obviously reference to his processing in preparation for posting to India.  The date given is 4 November 1943 and is followed by an entry “India Renamed SE Asia” with a movement date of 11 November 1943 and an arrival date of 16 November 1943. (Although arrival where, I don’t know, as it would have taken a lot longer than that to get to India).

Now here comes the interesting bit.  My father told me that while his ship was on its way to India, a couple of weeks or so after leaving the UK, it was torpedoed after it passed Malta, started to take water as a result of the damage sustained, and just managed to make it as far as Alexandria, where all the men who were travelling on her to India had to disembark and wait in Egypt for the next available boat to India.  From my father’s photograph album, I can tell that he spent Christmas in Egypt, although I don’t know how much longer he had to wait after that.  From what I can see, this means that the ship he left the UK on would have been the HMS Birmingham, as it is the only ship whose movements correspond with this version of events.  Any comments?

It appears that he arrived in India in January 1944, possibly the 22nd, judging from the entry on his card.  It would appear that the rather badly written entry under “Unit” indicates that his first posting in India was to Worli camp.

From 1 February to 3 August, 1944, he is shown as being attached to 385 (not sure if it is MU for Mobile Unit of WU for Wireless Unit, followed by a period of hospitalisation, first at 2 India General Hospital, then at Shillong followed by a Medical Field Hospital. I have no idea what this was for but it was for an exceptionally long period.  As far as I am aware, he had no war injuries at all, so I can only assume it was something like malaria or maybe dysentary, although I do remember him telling me once that he sent his mother into a panic when he wrote home to say he had gangrene…..

I have no idea what the entry for HD 164 S Wing, other than that I believe HD stands for Home Defence.

The entries for 368 WU and 376 WU tie in with some of the few things that my father told me about his war service - firstly that he had to learn Japanese Morse Code in addition to the standard Morse, and that the Japanese messages he intercepted were given to others to be interpreted.  It also fits in with his last posting being to Hong Kong.

His postings, roughly in chronological order (the order may not be 100% accurate), seem to have been Bombay, Kashmir, Calcutta, Bangalore, Rangoon, Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong.

Also, the entry for Home Embarkation speaks for itself, but can anyone tell me what “Compan. Snds” means?