The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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257874 Cpl. Ernest Wylie British Army Durham Light Infantry My father Ernest Wylie was called out at 3am on the 3rd of September 1939. After a short time his Battalion joined the BEF in France. I believe the DLI and the rest of the Northumbrian Division was part of the rearguard as the Army struggled back to Dunkirk. On the way my dad was severely wounded by a mortar splinter which damaged the flesh of his leg and smashed his ankle. Friends carried him to Dunkirk and left him on the beach. Fortunately, two sailors found him and carried him back to their ship a destroyer. As far as we were concerned, we thought he was gone but amazingly, we received a letter from him from Shotley Bridge Hospital. I still remember it was packed with little room between the beds. After some time it was determined that his wounds rendered him unfit for service. Nevertheless, he joined the Home Guard and was a fire watcher for our area. They were hard times. As I grew older, I got he sense that, because of his experiences, he always believed he was living on borrowed time. My mother said his service altered his character totally. Lest we forget. I was immensely proud of him. Brian Wylie Add to this record.  Related Content: Durham Light Infantry Battle of France and The Low Countries 1940 Operation Dynamo - The Evacuation from Dunkirk and nearby Beaches The Home Guard 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.