The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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220760 W/O. Raymond Thomas Marquet Royal New Zealand Air Force 75 Squadron from:Christchurch, NZ My father, Ray Marquet, joined the RNZAF in 1940 aged 21. He was trained as an observer (gun aimer) at Jervis 1 Bomber school in Ontario Canada passing as a navigator on Ansons and later Wellington bombers. He flew 13 operations before being shot down over Benghazi on 3rd of April 1942. He and all the crew bailed out safely with only the rear gunner Joe Galland spraining his ankle on impact with the Western Desert. They were taken in by the local tribesmen who initially looked after them, but after a few days alerted the local German troops of their whereabouts (an entire Wellington bomber crew would have been a good prize.) They were taken to Germany and housed at Dulag Luft where my dad (who was a jazz pianist in his spare time before the war) entertained the troops. He was actually kept there longer than was normal as he was judged to be good for morale. He was later sent to Stalag Luft 4B where he stayed for 3 1/2 years until the war ended. He never really talked about this time, but when he was demobbed and sent home to NZ he weighed 6 stone (he was a strapping 6 footer before the war). Julie Dunseath Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal New Zealand Air Force No. 75 Squadron Royal Air Force Benghazi Prisoner of War Camp Dulag Luft Prisoner of War Camp Stalag Luft 4 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.