The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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171843 Henry John "Dicky" Bird Royal Navy HMS Warspite from:London My step-father Henry Bird, joined the Royal Navy in 1939 at sixteen years of age. He eventually served as a stoker. I remember him talking of Salerno and D-Day. Later he served out East and met former prisoners of the Japanese. He was a good story teller, certainly the pride of being part of Britain's armed forces came across. Yet he did not glamorise anything. He included the tears, the prayers and the terror. He told it in the style of the rough working man that he was and polished it with the wisdom of having survived to grow older. My step-father was a very tough man. Raised in the east-end, he did his share of boxing as well as war service. The fact that thirty years later he could still cry out in his sleep taught me much about people and war. Henry "Harry" Bird died in 1972. Robert Land Add to this record.  Related Content: HMS Warspite Operation Avalanche - Salerno Landings Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.