The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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209415 WO. Arthur Kitchener Coulson Royal Navy HMS Manchester from:Portsmouth My Dad Arthur Coulson served on HMS Manchester during WW2. He was a warrant officer, I believe, in charge of the weapons control systems and was involved right from commissioning in Newcastle (the shipyard had to use Glaswegians to translate as the southern officers could not understand the local accent) He was one of those who managed to swim to shore when the ship was torpedoed and ended up in the prison camp. His views of the Vichy French were unprintable but beyond that he wouldn't talk about it. He was also in Scapa Flow over Xmas when the fleet was expecting war to be declared and said that it was one of his most miserable Xmas's ever. Alan Coulson Add to this record.  Additional Information: Of all the convoy duties he was involved in, he said that the Artic convoy runs were the worst. The weather was often appalling and the bow of the ship would be so heavily covered in ice that as the ship's bow tried to lift out of a wave, the ship would shudder and you could hear every rivet straining... The weather was a two edged sword as when bad the ship's ovens would be shut down so the food would be miserable, but good weather meant waves of air attacks from Norway. He remembered severe bow damage from an engagement in the Mediterean with the Captain having to close the forward bulkheads and then the ship limping into Malta and then having to lead a team into the damaged area to remove bodies. Despite the bad press generally about the Italians, he had tremendous respect for their Torpedo boats. Fast with brave crews as extremely vulnerable to gunfire. Alan Coulson Reply Related Content: HMS Manchester Laghouat Prisoner of War Camp 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.