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General => Armed Forces => World War Two => Topic started by: BenRalph on Tuesday 14 May 19 21:34 BST (UK)
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I've got 3 photos of this lady, all in this uniform, but at different locations. This is the only one where she wears the had and the medal (?) On her left breast pocket. I've no idea who she could be but it seems strange that my family would have kept 3 photos of a lady from three different times unless she was important to them (the photos could have come from at least 3 of my family as they were all put in a box over the years as relatives died off).
Thanks in advance for any help.
https://ibb.co/mJ4L8bh
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Also, there's quite a few photos of soldiers/people in uniform of people we've no idea who they are. We don't know where my great granddad went to during WWII other than that he was a Desert Rat at one point. There's photos with writing on the back mentioning Belgium, Germany, Holland and other places. I could post them in the future.
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The link doesn't work....
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Sorry. Hopefully this will work
https://ibb.co/mJ4L8bh
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ATS? :-\
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Ruskie has it - the lady is in the ATS - the Auxiliary Territorial Service - the army women's service in WW2. The badge on her breast pocket was usually that of the regiment or corps with which she was working. Someone may be able to ID that?
MaxD
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Thank you both. Would this mean she stayed local to where she lived or would she have gone abroad during the war?
It narrows down that at least she was English. There's photos in the box of women in uniforms who don't look to be from England.
And, with having 3 photos of the same woman, I'm trying to work out if she could be a relative. Would you say she was mid-20s in the photo?
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Could be mid 20s or even into her 30s perhaps, though I am not confident in that estimate.
Do any of the other photos show a wedding ring?
She is quite distinctive looking - does she resemble anyone in your family?
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She may well have served abroad.
Brief history - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6650237.shtml
MaxD
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Here are the other two photos of the lady. There's no writing on the back of te photos but one is in a (broken) sleeve so it seems she was important to one of my relatives at some point. She doesn't look like any of my family that I'm aware of. The closest could be my great grandma's half-sister but they never got on and she'd only be 25 by the time war ended. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself that it's a relative. My great granddad was a ladies man apparently and there's loads of photos with writing on the back with his first and last date with the lady in question. Maybe she's one of the ladies.
https://ibb.co/dWZYcGy
https://ibb.co/KL5S9Hk
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Near the hand of the lady on the first photo, very slightly, there's the stamp of the photography studio.
It's 55 New Street, Huddersfield. Greaves Studios.
We've spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out the address. This poses another issue. We've no connection to anyone in Huddersfield.
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In the service she may well have been stationed there so I don't think you should attach any importance to no connection.
MaxD
PS How about the pics with other uniforms?
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MaxD
PS How about the pics with other uniforms?
I will take a look for the other photos. The box has about 500 photos in and I'm very slowly trying to sort them. I was thinking of starting a thread and adding a new photo I need info on, but that may get boring.
There's one I have to hand that says on the back:
Yank Marines
We've joined the Navy now
On the right is
Boy Mills
Late heavy weight
Champion of the .... (army maybe)
And it shows one sergeant. Both of them are in navy uniforms.
I'll upload the photo now.
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Could be Freddie Mills perhaps, once Light Heavyweight World Champion? Served in the RAF in WW2.
Imber
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https://ibb.co/ZXTdHS3
https://ibb.co/Kq46qYf
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Could be Freddie Mills perhaps, once Light Heavyweight World Champion? Served in the RAF in WW2.
Imber
From using Google, it doesn't look like him.
From my very limited knowledge, these two men would be American?
Sorry I can be of no help.
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My first thought is that she may have been someone's sweetheart, so interesting that you say grgrandad was a ladies' man. ;)
In my opinion, if you have more photos you need identified, it would be better to start a new thread/s.
If you have similar photos you can probably group them together but I am not sure it is a good idea add 'Yank marines' to this thread. ;) Alternatively, you can rename the subject heading to cover identification of other photos as well.
One of the sailors might have been grgrandmother's sweetheart? ;D
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Yes, maybe you're right. I'll ask a mod to split the threads if posdible.
A bit of back story on my great granddad: he was engaged to a woman for year but always delayed the wedding. My great grandma said he really loved this woman, and there's lots of photos of her in this collection. But at this time there's also photos of other women, from Blackpool (with her address on the back in his writing), the Isle of Man with him in them, a lot of women from Leeds with 'to Wilf, all my kindest love, Doris' as well as another half dozen names on photos. My great grandma always referred to these as my great granddad's 'floozies'. The lady he was engaged to then left him and he married a woman he'd only briefly dated on the 'rebound'. He then went to war in '39 and came back on leave to find his wife had left their two year old son with her parents and she ran off with a soldier (we were told an American soldier but he was from Lincolnshire). They got a divorce after the war and he married my great grandma, who had also been married, and had a child, but her husband suffered during the war and didn't cope well after it ended. My great granddad's first wife died the day that her first grandson (who she wouldn't have known was due as she never saw her son again) was born and my great granddad went to the funeral as 'she was still my first wife and she graced me with a child'. He wrote on a bouquet of flowers 'from Wilf and Paul' and later said everyone knew who he was but nobody said anything to her new husband or the younger family.
I'm hoping he wasn't the 'ladies man' when he met my great grandma.
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The Yank photo really baffles as there's no Americans in the family and I don't know why someone would send their photo to a relative of mine.
Sorry for the rambling, long, post.
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The photo is of two US Navy sailors not marines. The "sergeant" is a petty officer (the upper badges), the lower badges are service stripes. How one of the sailors can be the army boxing champion is beyond me!
MaxD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_enlisted_rates#/media/File:Five_US_Navy_petty_officers_in_uniform.jpg
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The photo is of two US Navy sailors not marines. The "sergeant" is a petty officer (the upper badges), the lower badges are service stripes. How one of the sailors can be the army boxing champion is beyond me!
MaxD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_enlisted_rates#/media/File:Five_US_Navy_petty_officers_in_uniform.jpg
If you look at the rear of the photo it doesn't look like the last word is 'army'. It looks more like 'Qmary' or the nane of a ship. I tried making out the word but couldn't. I'm pretty confident it's not 'army', though.
Also, it looks like what I thought was 'navy now' says 'many now'. The first word has been written over at a later date with another word that's the same length but in different pen.
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The photo is of two US Navy sailors not marines. The "sergeant" is a petty officer (the upper badges), the lower badges are service stripes. How one of the sailors can be the army boxing champion is beyond me!
MaxD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_enlisted_rates#/media/File:Five_US_Navy_petty_officers_in_uniform.jpg
Also would these mistakes in the writing mean that the writing was done by someone who wasn't American as they'd not call them marines (as well as Yanks)?
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Your reply @ #17 is great Ben - I think that their story would make a great TV series, including your finds of photographs of many unknown women. :)
Added: I wonder if the writing on the back of the photo is intended to be a joke?
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Your reply @ #17 is great Ben - I think that their story would make a great TV series, including your finds of photographs of many unknown women. :)
Added: I wonder if the writing on the back of the photo is intended to be a joke?
Oh that's only the start of it. There's a great story about his escapades with his shiny Christmas pudding!
My girlfriend thought it could have been a joke, but even so, how did it end up in a collection of photos with my family who had no connection to any Americans during WWII?
Could you make a guess at what the last word on the back says?
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How one of the sailors can be the army boxing champion is beyond me!
What if he was British, a British Army boxing champion in the 1920's or 1930's who subsequently emigrated to the US and joined the US Marines?
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What if he was British, a British Army boxing champion in the 1920's or 1930's who subsequently emigrated to the US and joined the US Marines?
Marines who dressed up as sailors for a photograph? Time for me to de-notify this topic.
MaxD
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I originally thought the last word might be "Army" but there is an extra squiggle in the word, so I am not sure that is right (or makes sense).
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I originally thought the last word might be "Army" but there is an extra squiggle in the word, so I am not sure that is right (or makes sense).
I thought it could say 'QMary' as in thr ship. But I can't really say for certain.