The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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246460 A.B. Raymond Charles John Oliver Royal Navy HMS Hartland from:Greenwich, London (d.19th Jul 1943) Raymond Oliver is my Great Uncle Ray. He was a strong Christian and he had a difficult time deciding whether to fight or be a conscientious objector as his father had been during WW1. However he decided to go and serve with the Royal Navy. The family story is that he had been giving leaflets out to the many American service men about safety on ship emergency procedures. The ship HMS Hartland, was hit near Egypt that night and the men went into the water. My uncle was shot, probably machine gunned in the water. However, the Americans pulled him out of the water and took him on their medical facility. They even gave him an American uniform to wear as he had nothing. Raymond briefly returned to the UK via Bristol but he was really very seriously hurt and according to the family, looked truly awful. Ray was very shaken that those young men he'd only just handed out those leaflets out to were most likely dead. He was to return to naval duties but died as the result of an illness, weakened by being shot. My family were devastated by his loss. Raymonds great neice has continued his good name in giving his name to her born son Alexander Ray. God rest a good man. Jenni Bevis-Lacey Add to this record.  Related Content: HMS Victory HMS Hartland 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.