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The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.
Announcements
- The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 24 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.
- 18th April 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 263925 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 FAQ's
- 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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We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates.
If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.
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 6th Battalion, South Wales Borderers? There are:1335 items tagged 6th Battalion, South Wales Borderers 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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Pte. William John "Alec" Alexander 6th Btn. South Wales Borderers (d.9th November 1944) My father was Jack Alexander, from Battersea. He enlisted in the 6th Battalion, South Wales Borderers on 17th of July 1940, a few weeks before my brother was born. He spent the next four years in Devon before being sent overseas to India on 18th of July 1944 with the 6th Battalion, arriving on 17th of August.
He was killed in action in Burma on 9th of November 1944 when he was 27 and I was nearly three months old. Obviously he hadn't seen me, but was aware that I'd been born. My brother was four years old and my mother only 24 at the time.
I don't know any details of his time spent serving his country, but I do know that my mother went on to have an extremely hard life, struggling to bring up two children with no support from anywhere except her recently widowed father. Coming from a very respectable family, she had to spend her life scrubbing floors for others, and living hand to mouth from day to day. She never got over losing my father, and was always frail, but put on a brave face to the world while wearing herself out working and looking after others. I looked after her until she died aged 82.
My mother didn't believe in charity, but was persuaded to ask the British Legion for help once when she was at a very low point. However, after being interviewed in a smokey room full of well fed, well dressed club members she was handed a food voucher for £1. She was absolutely humiliated and I'm told that she tore up the voucher there and then.
I am pleased that today's war widows are looked after financially, but feel very bitter that war heroes were not valued at that time and my mother had no help at all. There were no single parent families in those days, we were just poor and it really was a struggle to survive.
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