The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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234816 Trpr. Thomas Robert Harding British Army B Squadron Royal Tank Regiment from:London My grandfather, Tommy Harding, was a trooper (tank driver), member of the RTR. He served first with the Experimental Wing of the RTR and was stationed at Bovington before moving off to North Africa. He was captured at El Alamein on 4th September 1942 and passed into Italian hands. Details of this can be found in the 50th Royal Tank Regiment, The Complete History by Stephen D Hamilton. the operation did not go as planned and due to loss of radio contact, a mistake by NZ troops in reading a signal, and an unmarked mine field a catastrophic event occurred leading to loss of life in the tanks and capture by the Germans, who handed their prisoners over to the Italians. After being held by the Italians and then shipped back to various prison camps and transit areas Tom arrived at POW Camp Stalag IVC in October 1943 and was promptly put to work in the coal mines. At the end of the war he was returned home to a military hospital, Preston Hall at Maidstone, weighing just five and a half stone and suffering from TB and malnutrition. He was discharged in December 1946 with a 100% disability having had a tubercular lung removed and with extensive damage to the other. Despite this Tom worked as a driver before he and his wife, Ada, bought a pet shop at Clapham before retiring to Cambridgeshire where he died in 1969 from the lasting effects of the tuberculosis. Carol Walsh Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal Tank Regiment Stalag 4C 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.