Send a Message via the The Wartime Memories Project Website
Send a Message via The Wartime Memories Project Website
Your message will be forwarded to the last contact details we have, your email address will not be passed on, they can reply to you via this messaging system.
Please scroll down for message form.
211585
Thomas Duffy
My father's name was Thomas Duffy. He was born in 1918 in Moyglass, Ireland. I know from what he said, and a letter received from his brother after his death, that he was a survivor of the Lancastria. I do not know his regiment or service number. We only knew prior to his death of the disaster because he broke down one day when a film of Dunkirk came on the TV. He was not allowed to talk about it and his behaviour deteriorated greatly after this TV programme. He suffered shell shock and was under mental health treatment until he died in 1978.
He met and married my mother in 1966, they separated when I was 4 years old due to his behaviour. After the war he worked on the Snowy Mountain tunneling project in Australia before coming back to the UK to settle in Manchester.
I belive he settled in Manchester as the family of a man he befriended on the Lancastria lived there and he felt guilty for taking the last place in a rescue boat.
He died on a visit to his sisters in Strokestown, Ireland in 1978.