The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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257020 William Victor Horace Mintram British Army 7th Btn Royal East Kent Regiment from:Southampton, Hampshire   Bill Mintram served with the Hampshire Regiment for basic training when he was called up in December 1939. In January 1942 he transferred to the 8th Battalion, Essex Regiment a Churchill tank unit, which became 153rd Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps. He stayed with the Essex Tankies right through to D-Day, crossing the Channel on an American Landing Ship shortly after the beaches were secured. On the eve of sailing, he learnt that his brother, Roy, was nearby, so he managed to meet up with him, little knowing that he would meet him three times more in France and Belgium in bizarre circumstances. Once when he was fetching water from a farmhouse, again when he was reconnoitering a safe route for the Regiment through a heavily bombed town and finally at the Montgomery Club in Brussels. He served in Churchill Tanks in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He was transferred to the 7th Battalion of the Royal East Kent Regiment where he operated the Churchill MkVII. He commanded his tank right through to VE Day and recounted one of his last tasks as burning down the Typhus huts at Belsen Concentration Camp. He was released from service 9th of April 1946. The attached photo is of Bill Mintram and his crew next to their Churchill Mk VII I believe. Any assistance identifying the full tank number would be appreciated. Andrew Tickner Add to this record.  Related Content: Hampshire Regiment 8th Battalion, Essex Regiment 153rd Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps D Day and the Battle of Normandy 7th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment 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.