by fisha » Mon Feb 20, 2012 12:35 am
Hi Louis,
Many many thanks for you help and replies.
I will get in contact with the person you mentioned and will of course say that it was through yourself.
I didn’t realise that the website was run by yourself, I thought some branch of the army funded it!
We visited my uncles grave in 2008 at the Hottot-Les-Bagues War Cemetary in Normandy. I have some pictures of the cemetary and his grave. I don’t know if they’d be of any interest for your website? If they are let me know, and I’ll mail them to you. I also took a camcorder and did a little 15minute filming of the cemetary, again, let me know if you’d be interested and I could always forward a copy onto you.
I did manage to find 2 pitures of 1st BN, ‘D’ company on your site. These were of the 17th and 18th platoons in April 1944, and they had all of the names attached (no mention of Colin Fisher) and so I then assumed that he must of been in 16th platoon, but I couldn’t find a picure of that platoon to back it up! But after what you’ve said about the other two soldiers that got killed in the Support Platoon, that does make sense. I do have an 89 year old aunt still around, and I will ask her to have a look at the two picures you sent in the booklet that you wrote, but whether or not she can remember what my uncle looks like, I don’t know. Maybe I’l never know. I guess it’s a bit of a mystery that he’s mentined as being in ‘D’ Company in Feburary but doesn’t appear on the pictures.. I guess he could of even been transferred to A, B or C Company for that matter, but like you say, it does point to the Support Company and the war diary does state that on the 7th of July (when my uncle got killed) that the BN HQ area got heavily hit with mortar fire, and I’m guessing that the support company (or at least the mortar platoon) might have been more toward the rear along with BN HQ ?
Myself and my wife will definately be taking another trip to France, later this year hopefully. This time I am going to follow the route of the 1st BN through Mont Fleury,Manvieux,Brecy,Brouay,Le Mesnil-Patry,Cheux and down to Mouen. Obviously, thinking my uncle was in ‘D’ Company, I thought he landed on the 22nd of June aboard the Canterbury, but now that he could of been in the support Company, would that mean he sailed on a different ship? Or would just the mortar equipment be on another ship and most of the soldiers would still have been on the Canterbury? ( I’m thinking of the ship that carried the Motor Transport, that got held up at the harbour in France and didn’t embark until a few days later – The MT48 ‘Empire Duke’ ) Am I also right in thinking that the mortars and rounds wouldn’t be put into the landing crafts and been able to be carried ashore?, therefore they’d have been aboard the MT ship that had to moor up and get unload properly?
Never-the-less, I will still try and go through all the towns that the 1st BN went through and re-tread their paths and will then visit The Hill 112 memorials and Churchill Tank and then go onto what I think was called ‘Cornwall Wood’ as we didn’t visit this area the last time we went over.
Once again, many thanks for your help. What you have done with your website is fantastic. It is a sad and at the same time, fascinating experience for me, trying to trace the footsteps of my uncle, and without your help, I wouldn’t have gotten very far at all.