The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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241316 Pte. Joseph Law British Army 50 Coy. Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps from:Castleton, Rochdale, Lancs (d.17th June 1940) My grandfather, Joseph Law of 50 Company, Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps aged 41 years, was aboard the HMT Lancastria during evacuation from France in Operation Ariel, this was some two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation. Around 4pm a German dive-bomber attacked the ship and she sank within 20 minutes. It is thought that as many as 6000 people (men, women and children) lost their lives. Grandad Joe was among those killed and the irony that he was terrified of drowning is particularly upsetting. Countless people drowned or were choked by oil on the water's surface. Strafing German aircraft shot many and somebody told my mother that this is how her father Joe died, of course this can never be corroborated. Joe left his wife Mary Elizabeth Law and four children Hilda, Joey, Douglas and Ellen, the eldest of the children was my mother Hilda. Mum never got over the loss of her father, they were very close and she missed him for the rest of her life. I believe grandad Joe did a fabulous impersonation of Charlie Chaplin's stick twirling walk and could make a muscle mouse walk across his shoulders! It is extremely sad that I never met my grandad Joe, but I really wish mum hadn't lost her dad. My mother Hilda went to work on munitions as her way of helping the war effort. Tony Ebanks Add to this record.  Related Content: HMT Lancastria 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.