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Trade Training 1942


Pete Ashby

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Hi Pete, my father was the Armoury F/Sergeant on a Coastal Command squadron and kept some technical manuals and course notebooks which unfortunately I lost when I cleared his house after his death. He rarely talked of the war and when he did it was mostly humorous stuff but he would talk about the technical problems they had with the Frazer Nash turrets fitted to Lockheed Hudsons when they replaced the Avro Anson's . Like most blokes he just wanted to get back to a normal family life, never collected the medals he was entitled to although one of his tunics had ribbons on, he'd grudgingly obeyed an order to wear them.

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Like most blokes he just wanted to get back to a normal family life, never collected the medals he was entitled to although one of his tunics had ribbons on, he'd grudgingly obeyed an order to wear them.

 

That seems to be a very common theme Degsy, my Father's medals came in the post and spent the next 45 years in the unopened box in his shirt draw until I dug them out and mounted them with relevant corp badges and patches. He was happy to talk about his war service but as you have noted it was mostly good times and the vehicles he worked on.

Pete

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Hi Pete. My bad terminology I'm afraid. When I said he joined the A/T Regt I should have said he was posted to the LAD. I believe his posting was a result of the regiment gaining SP guns and an expanded LAD to include a welder. I expect some people will say that as REME he wasn't a front-line soldier, but he seems to have spent a lot of his time doing recovery work (I imagine welding jobs would have been too few to fill his time), and I'm sure some of it would have been within sight and range of the enemy. Some of the recovery involved pretty gruesome work, as one story he told was of removing the crew from a German tank which had been hit by an A/P round which cut the crew to ribbons, with the first indication being the top half of the commander that he pulled from the cupola.

 

Not a nice thought.

 

Thanks also for the link. I have done some research, but that sounds like a good place to look for more info.

 

Steve.

 

Ah right I see Steve,

 

yes LAD could be a very sticky wicket indeed. It would be worth getting your Father's unit diary's they will give you a day by day account of location and work undertaken and some times considerably more information as well.

 

Pete

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Ah right I see Steve,

 

yes LAD could be a very sticky wicket indeed. It would be worth getting your Father's unit diary's they will give you a day by day account of location and work undertaken and some times considerably more information as well.

 

Pete

 

I looked at the war diary for the regiment, at the RA museum in the arsenal not long after it moved there. I took a few notes at the time, but I think I'd like to have another go through and see if there's anything that I missed. There's a fair bit of info online of course, which is where I read about the issuing of SP guns in December '44, so I'll keep looking to try to get a full picture of the unit's comings and goings.

 

Steve.

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