The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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260757 A/QMS. Eric Norman Pye British Army 829th Tank Workshop Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers 829th Tank Workshops 1945 My father Eric Pye was apprenticed as a locksmith. He joined the RAOC in Sept 1940 and transferred to REME on its formation in 1942. He worked on a variety of Hobarts Funnies. He was at Vauxhalls at Luton for some time and nearly drowned in their test tank whilst testing a DD tank. He was mixed up with the Canadians and we frequently had a small convoy outside our house in North London. Immediately before D Day he was in charge of the gang armouring the Caterpillar Bulldozers ready for the beaches. He went ashore with the Canadians on D Day plus 2. Back in London we had a near miss from a V2 rocket about 10 doors away. Apart from being at Belsen when it was burnt down by Crocodiles he seems to have had a reasonable time. He always said the only Europeans he got on with were the Germans! On his return to civvy street he resumed a career in Ironmongery, He joined the AER, which meant that both of us were in REME as I did my National Service. The tradition continued as my son Robert joined Royal Signals as a boy soldier, retiring last year as a Lieutenant Colonel. His daughter is in the OCC at Liverpool. Dad passed away in September 1996 aged 84. Roger John Pye Add to this record.  Related Content: Royal Army Ordnance Corps 829th Tank Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Vauxhall, Luton D Day and the Battle of Normandy 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.