The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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238185 LAC George "Paddy" O'Brien Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve from:Liverpool I am present writing an account of my Uncle George O'Brien who joined the RAFVR in July 1939 and after six months basic training at West Drayton was sent to Dunkirk. His brother, my uncle Frank, also signed up around the same time and they were both rescued off the beaches of Dunkirk coming back to England on a coal barge together. Uncle Frank was eventually posted to Malta where he endured intense bombing on the RAF station while Uncle George was sent out to the Western Desert where he was tasked to rescue downed fighters from almost anywhere using a Thorneycroft mounted with a Coles crane. He eventually arrived in Tunis after The Big Push and later was posted to Sardinia before traveling up the length of Italy before being sent back to the UK to be demobbed in 1946. I have a good number of photographs of the journey although they are not now in the best of condition but he related to me many stories of his time. If anyone remembers him or has any information of his time in the RAF or experince of Salvage Operations in the Western Desert I would be very pleased to hear from them. Terry O'Brien Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve Operation Dynamo - The Evacuation from Dunkirk and nearby Beaches Battle of France and The Low Countries 1940 Siege of Malta Italian Campaign RAF West Drayton 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.