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224692
Robert Russell
British Army
from:Brighton
(d.1940)
I don't know much about my uncle Robert Russell who was 19 or 20 when he was killed but he was driving evacuated troops from Dunkirk when the carrier was blown up.
My grandfather died broken-hearted within 2 years of his death, my grandmother died when I was a year old. My father only had one brother, Robert. Other family members ostracised him for marrying an Italian at the end of the war. Years later when some members tried to make contact my father he was not interested and so the only family I had growing up in England were my parents and one sister. We havea brother who was brought up in Italy because when my father brought my mother to England they had no family to stay with and were left to find accommodation that didn't want my mother and then didn't want my parents and my brother (who was born in 1946)
My father was too hurt to talk about his family, although he did talk about the war. I was born in 1954 and my sister in 1955 and by that time my parents had settled and had a home I. Which to raise us.
I have two sons now and my youngest son, 21 is very interested in my father's family as are all of us. Of course, I have no one to ask and very little information to go on so even going through the usual channels is difficult
I have given as much information as I can but I have no more information that that. I did see one photograph when I was small where Robert can be seen in front of a Rolls Royce that he apparently drove before the war (he may have been a chauffeur) and he lived in Brighton with an uncle, apparently the same uncle who disowned my father on marrying my mother