|
|
|
10th May 1941On this day:
If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.
|
Remembering those who died this day.
- Hill John. Pte. (d.10th May 1941)
The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed,
please
Add a Name to this List
|
|
|
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.
- 22nd 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 263973 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. |
|
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.
|
|
Want to know more about the 10th of May 1941? There are:13 items tagged 10th of May 1941 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. |
|
Stories from 10th May 1941
|
Sgt. Robert Anderson. British Army, No 3 Company Royal Corps of Signals. Duty sergeant Robert Anderson Royal Corp of Signals No 3 Company Anti- Aircraft Eaglesham House, May 10 1941.
“You have to bear in mind it was the early days of the war and we were anything but prepared. For instance there was a secret password that signaled the German invaders had arrived. It was ‘Cromwell’ and as I said a secret but everyone knew it! They knew it down in the village of Eaglesham and they knew it in the Eglinton arms pub there. It was all a big joke. So were we soldiers. I guess we were a bit like Fred Karno’s army, I suppose. We would go out for keep fit runs from our base then as soon as we got to Eaglesham we would nip into the Eglinton Arms for a refreshment and as for being defenders of the local community, Well if that word ‘Cromwell’ had been used in earnest there was little we could have done about it for we had only a few rifles between the entire company and what guns we did have had been taken from us. That was because when they had issued them a soldier had accidentally set one off nearly killing one of his colleagues so we were issued with pikes and clubs to defend the nation.
I was Duty sergeant that night Hess’s plane came over and remember seeing it so low overhead then the man dangling on the end of his parachute just up the road a little past Floor's farm. As I had to stay on duty in the camp I sent two of my men unarmed, of course, up the road to see what was happening. They were signalman Emyr Morriss and Danny McBride and they were the first two army personnel to meet the newly arrived pilot who said his name was Horn. And, together with the man from the farm who had first met Hess, they all ended up having a cosy chat with each other. Hess presenting Danny McBride with an inscribed cigarette case which he kept until senior officers heard about it when it was confiscated.
Anyway, while my two men were chatting away to Hess just up the road the panic had set in at the camp. One of the senior officers having seen the plane reckoned it had been a pathfinder flight for invasion force. There was shouting and confusion and the duty officer had guns issued to myself and signalman Sammy McLaughlin who was an ex-Cameronian and ordered us to climb to the top of a heap of telegraph poles which had been stored nearby from where he said we were to ‘await the enemy and hold off an attack’. Orders were issued with their pikes and sticks and ordered to be ready for the worst. I’m telling you when you look back on it all you wonder how on earth we survived and eventually won the war.
If it was Fred Karno’s army at the soldier base it was Dad's army at another point just along the road Eaglesham. There, having been alerted to the possibility of the crashed plane being German, a local detachment of the Home Guard had been mustered and began arriving by car. There Captain Mainwaring apparently had been enjoying his Saturday night in a traditional Scottish way, which would doubtless had him bemoaning the fact that the price of whiskey had just gone up to a record high, being 88p for a bottle or at the local Swan and Eglinton Arms bars it would now be 5 and a half pence for a half or 9p for what the locals called a loud yin.
Fortified by the whiskey and waving a large caliber First world War officer's pistol which was more Howitzer than side arm, he was to lead his squad of Home Guardsman, together with a couple of regular soldiers who had joined them as well as a reserve police constable, into action.
They had practiced converging manoeuvres before and knew exactly what to do when the captain in charge gave the order. After seeing the smouldering wreck of the Messerschmidt it’s big black German cross unmistakable identifying just whose plane it was, they were to converge on Floor's farm, the nearest building to where the parachutist had been seen to fall.
The ensuing scene is not difficult to imagine, the motley semi-military, semi-police, semi-trained and in at least on case semi-sober squad covering each other with a variety of weapons, the officer with his cannon of a revolver hunching forward to surround the farm buildings, then searching the byres and barns and meanwhile the Hauptmann from the heavens is serenely ensconced fifty or so yards away in the ploughman’s little cottage being offered kindness and tea and chatting away to his new found Scottish hosts."
Karin
|
Pte. John Hill. British Army, 4th Btn. Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders. (d.10th May 1941) Private Hill was the Son of Charles Ormond Hill and Jemima Hill, of Nairn. His brother, Charles, also died on service.
He was 22 and is buried in the Cervera Cemetery in Spain.
S. Flynn
|
|
