384 anti tank regt RWF

I have been trying to trace for along time my Grandad's past in the army. (DICKY WILIAMS)
He joined up in 1938-39 to the 384 Anti tank regt P battery, Royal Welch Fusilliers based in his home town of Flint north Wales.
he was apart of the BEF and it seems a a German POW according to some records from 1940 to 45 after going back to find his younger brother on the beach who had been killed.
Thing is the Stalag dog tag I have of his is not listed and nor is his army number 4193730 anywhere.
Yet he told my uncle before he died that he never was in the pow camp at all and that he was sent to the Island of Rhodes to train Resistance fighters. which we did have a photograph of but it has been mislaid or we think his daughter has it but is saying nothing.
He also had a child in 43 and 45 so there is no way he could have been in Stalag XX1B in poland.
He did say he was a Japenes POW but not for long we got out what ever that refers to.
Could he have been drafted in to something like the SOE or a unit like that and had his I.D wiped out. I have heard that he refused alot of medals due to him feeling that a massacre on the Island was his fault as the germans found out he was there.
On returning to the village he found they had shot all the people including old and children and he never came to terms with it and blamed himself for what happend.
In the mid 80s my Uncle was in a bar in Old Rhodes town when he saw a picture of his Dad with three or four Greeks and two other what looked like UK forces.
he approched the bar owner and was told it was a picture of Dicky a big hero to the people of the Island. He gave his dads Phone number and sure enough the call came.
When the phone was picked up a man asked for dicky to which my uncle gave the phone to his Dad only to listen in astonisment as his dad started to talk in fluent Greek for 30 odd mins.
With tears streaming down his face he put the phone down and said they want me to go back but I cant.
Nothing was ever talked about again as he would cut people dead and turn away.
please if anyone can help or may have know him could you get in touch.
many thanks

David Williams

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Originally Posted by dicky

I have been trying to trace for along time my Grandad's past in the army. (DICKY WILIAMS)
He joined up in 1938-39 to the 384 Anti tank regt P battery, Royal Welch Fusilliers based in his home town of Flint north Wales. David Williams

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Phew, thats some sort of story. Somewhere amongst that is some truth. Finding it may take a little while.

Firstly the unit. 2 anti tank units came from Flintshire:

1. 5th Battalion Flintshire Regiment was converted into the 60th Anti tank Regiment RA(RWF) in Nov 1938. In 1940 over half of the regiment was captured during the retreat to Dunkirk. ( I think the actor Desmond Llewellyn; Q from James Bond was one of those).

2. 70 Anti Tank Regiment was in Flintshire at the outbreak of war. afterwards it was a holding/training unit around the uk. It saw no overseas service.

Next the army number. It looks good to me. As an example, I have found an RWF Lcpl A Hughes MM with the number 4193030. I believe this is the late father of Spider and Hughie Hughes 13. (both are forum members) and I think the Hughes family originated from North Wales. So my guess is, the number for your grandfather is correct or very close.

The Japanese POW bit. I'm not aware of any RWF captured by the Japanese.

The Greek story...Its possible, especially if he had a particular skill. if true it is very interesting, and worth following up. I dont think his ID would have been wiped. Post war, the activities of SOE and other units were widely published. I would suggest you apply to the MOD for his service record. There is a charge of about £35, and you will have a long wait.(about 10 months. Either way, it will give you the full story. The request form can be downloaded at the link below:

http://www.veterans-uk.info/service_...e_records.html

Please keep the forum updated on how you get on.

Many thanks

thank you for that and again I am only going on what I have .

on his pay book it says

Comdg P battery
384 anti tank regt
RA (RNF)

There is referance to the BEF inside the book which would make sense as his younger brother died at Dunkirk and they fought together.

The tag I have says Stalag XX1B nr 10453 (a camp in poland).

the greek thing having again spoken to my uncle tonight he says that he has seen the picture and was there when the call came to the house yrs later.

I also have a letter sent to my nan in return of a letter she must have sent to the MOD after his location.
it is addressed ..Infantry training centre, The RWF, The Barracks, wrexham dated 7th july 1940.
saying in 1940 they had no idea where he was at all but they would forward the letter to the officer i/c records, RA, Warlley Essex.

Just in case anyone may have know him.
His full name was Richard Williams ( DICKY ) he had four brothers one of which was called Teddy.
they lived in 11 princes st ,Flint , flintshire.

thank you very much for your help.

The letter written by your nan was shortly after Dunkirk. so its probably fair to say his whereabouts were unknown. As you have already mentioned, he had children in 43 and 45, so the stalag discs are strange. Do you know what rank he held?

I would recommend that you follow up on his service record. It should be an interesting read, and would certainly be of great interest to the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum if the Greek angle is correct.

Could you scan the paybook, and post it on the site, it would be good to see it.

Good Luck

I am hoping to buy a scanner very soon and would love to put the paybook up on here
for you its nice to know people are intrested.
His paybook says he was a Gunner but again i have been told that he was actually a corporal. Can I send you a PM over one thing that I really dont want to put on here regaurding this as I have done some searching today and found one very strange thing.
i really dont want to put it on here in case its so stupid I get laughed of your site but I have now had confirmation off two people that it is true.

this is a fascinating story i cant be of any help but would love to see the out come of all this. all the best with your enquiries........

ypour not wrong there rob and i for one being a nosey git hope we get the pput on here as this is better than anything on tv and i can't wait to hear more , dicky start digging lets get to the bottom of this and post soon mate

pput was meant to be pm but as you can tell the excitement has got to my typing finger

Hello Al,
Desmond Llewellyn aka "Q" in the Bond films was captured at Dunkirk. I will try and dig some info out re this RWF man who was reputed to be in Crete. Might take a while but who knows what I may come up with.
Regards Don

Hello all and again thank you for all the intrest , I know it sounds very very far fetched but I have been sent an e.mail to day to do with the SOE.
Now in it I was told to start digging about a massacre in the village of Kalavryta which was revenge for SOE and partisan attacks on Axis troops.
Now in the pm I sent to ap1 i think I told him about a picture that had britsh troops on it , but my uncle said one was a yank.
today I find out that Force 133 had mixed uk and american nationals working together.
I was also told that the man in the bar may just have been from another place in greece and was now living in rhodes.
that sounds to far fetched for me but he then told me to be pre pared for some very disturbingfacts If it turns out that my grandad was apart of what he thinks he was involved in.
he has given me a load of codes and thinks they relate to operation hercules(not the Malta one) this is what he put....

ACCOLADE, I’m inclined to put 50p on Operation HERCULES, in WO, CAB, DEF2 and PREM files in the PRO – nothing to do with the German operation to seize Malta BTW.
having look in to it today I found this...

On the night of 19/20th Oct 1943 my father , a Roman Catholic Irishman, Captain Conal O'Donnell Royal Engineers, aged 28, was parachuted into occupied Greece.He was a British Liaison Officer (BLO) with SOE Middle East,known as Force 133.His mission was to discover and construct isolated mountain airstrips which could be used to receive arms supplies for the Greek resistance in the Peloponnese.It was also intended to build landing grounds from which Allied fighter bombers could harry the Germans once the invasion was underway.

However progress on this vital work was soon swept away as he and his colleagues were caught up in a German operation which led to the massacre of 497 men and boys in the Greek village of Kalavryta on Dec13th 1943 (1)

The drama unfolded quickly .On October 17 1943 Communist ELAS partisans captured 81 German soldiers from I Battalion 749 Jaeger Regiment of the 117th Jaeger Division near Kalavryta.The men were not first rate troops, but should have been able to shoot their way out of the ambush on a mountain track near the villages of Kerpini and Rogoi.Many were Austrians, with a few Alsatians and other conscripts from occupied Europe.The rest were German.The unit was commanded by Hauptmann Johannes Schober.

Four Germans were killed on the spot.Three were taken to hospital at Kalavryta but were later battered to death by the Andartes.The rest were detained at Mazeika south of Kalavryta and treated as prisoners of war until the decision was taken to kill them too.Most were shot dead and some plunged over the cliff near Mazi from the force of the shots.Two German prisoners survived the execution and raised the alarm on the following day 8 December 1943.

The Germans reacted as they always did.Over three thousand troops were deployed in Operation Kalavryta , launched on 4 December from Patras,Aigion and Tripolis, and later from Corinth and Pyrgos.The columns were all aimed at Kalaryta.Their first objective was to draw the andartes into battle:and second,to find and free the German prisoners.The German commanders learned of the execution of the prisoners on 8 December and General Karl von Le Suire gave immediate orders for savage reprisals.He himself then flew to Kalavryta to instruct Major Ebersberger,the newly appointed commander of the operation,how to carry out these "atonement measures".Capt O'Donnell warned personal Greek friends to leave Kalavryta and take to the hills.

In a de- briefing report after the war Capt O'Donnell wrote "I moved to Kalavryta to find a German drive from Patras in full swing.I got to HQ about four hours before the HUN and was made OC of a mule convoy of HQ stores and personnel moving to HELMOS, a mountain about ten hours distant.Here I lay low for twenty days ,completely surrounded and with little food."(2)

As the HQ party - code named ENOCH - retreated the Germans rounded up all males aged twelve and over and marched them out of Kalavryta to a large hollow shaped area of open ground known as Kapi's Field just beyond the town cemetery.There the Greeks waited thinking they were to be deported.The Germans had already set up concealed machine gun posts.Flares rose up from the village.It was the signal to start killing.

The German machine guns opened up murdering at least 463 men and boys.The women and younger children had been herded into the school.The town was then set on fire.The town's church clock still stands transfixed at 2.34 marking the time the Germans destroyed Kalavryta .After the war a story arose that a humane soldier opened one of the school doors allowing the women and children to escape.This was untrue:the doors were not locked anyway.

O'Donnell and his party heard the gunfire as they made for Mt Helmos.It was the bloody climax to days of escalating violence.He and other BLOs had witnessed Stukas dive bombing the village of Visoka just to the north of Kalavryta on 29 November.During Operation Kalavryta Mega Spilaio and Agia Lavra monasteries were torched and monks killed.

Signals he managed to get out to SOE HQ in Cairo tell the terse, dreadful story in radio telegraphese. "Kalavryta occupied by Germans burned.Cannot take drop Soudhena as being chased" .And in more detail "Two hundred Germans with mules and artillery collected all fowls,pigs,mules clothing and money found in villages and burned them all except five houses in each....Guides were forced to bury remains afterwards shot.Population desolate no clothes or houses for winter"(3)

When the Germans moved off O'Donnell made his way back through Kalavryta and was one of the first British officers on the scene.To his credit he helped one of the few survivors of the mass-execution to reach better shelter in the ruined town,and contacted the Red Cross.He later made himself unpopular with Cairo for demanding relief drops took priority over continued arms supplies.Later in June 1944 he and Major Campbell MC travelled on foot and by mule distributing air dropped British gold sovereigns to devastated communities including Kalavryta.

He never really talked about the massacre apart from remarking that the wailing of the women was "unbearable".The experience badly affected him .After the war he suffered dreadful nightmares- what might now be called" post traumatic stress" as did hundreds of thousands of ex servicemen.Too many to treat, even if the diagnosis had been made.His strong Roman Catholic faith helped him cope with the experience .

In 1978 he returned to Kalavryta with his wife and was generally well received, although he resented the way some Communist sympathisers tried to claim that the British were in some way responsible for the tragedy. He couldn't bring himself to watch TV footage of later violence in the Balkans in the 1990s.It reminded him too much of wartime Greece.He was also outraged that the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was never held to account for his role as a German staff officer in Greece.A German report on the massacre was intialled by Waldheim.Following O'Donnell's death in 1996 his family discovered he'd always paid for a Requiem Mass to be said for the people of Kalavryta each Dec 13th.

Along way from Rhodes but????

amazing thanks for sharing that with us i was enthralled form your first post

An amazing thread and all credit to those who have taken the time to research.

Be very interested in the outcome.

Gerry943

I have now had another e.mail form a man with a world of knowledge and it seems that this can run and run.
I may have to get in touch with the regiment museum and see if they can tell me anything about him pre greece but after the post I laid on here today regarding the massacre in the village I have know been sent this info.
Now this is from someone who really seems to be on the ball and has shown me that force 133 was also in Rhodes so he may well have been there.
this is very intresting.



Re being ‘right’ about the island, it’s just an observation on probability based on various conclusions I have arrived at over time. As you appear to be very low on specifics, probabilities and possibilities are valid. For example, if someone asked me to guess the Aegean island where three men landed by sub to train locals as Partisans, I’d probably guess Crete? However, I wouldn’t put my mortgage on it as there were hundreds of landings all over various islands by Army and Navy (including utilisation of what may be termed ‘Private Armies’), SOE and various MI organisations. Though they preferred to ‘do their own thing’, of necessity (and sometimes on direct order) they would help each other out – and then claim any success was really down to them.

At the top of the scale you had Churchill driving the whole Aegean enterprise, principally supported by Cunningham (C in C Med), and Jumbo Wilson, C in C Middle East. Thwarting him at almost every step of the way were the Americans. Churchill never abandoned his ideas and if he couldn’t do what he wanted, then he did what he could. i.e. If he couldn’t have (primarily) the landing craft for an invasion, he’d use and sanction as many ploys as he could which didn’t entail American involvement.

Rhodes was an early prime target. The largest island of the Dodecanese with airstrip and good strategic position for operations in that area. The island had been more or less Italian before WWI and had around 36’000 Italians garrisoned there, and 6’000 Germans. There was a large Italian community and the Italian CO was also the island’s governor – more a governor than a soldier. Reports state it was a peaceful and relatively happy existence. Rhodes was to be seized by Layforce, which was a mostly a Commando force sent from Britain early ’41. After the German invasion of Greece/Yugoslavia, this operation was called off. After the Italian Armistice in autumn ’43, there was a splendid opportunity to take the Aegean islands with existing Italian forces as co-belligerents. It could have been, but wasn’t. Some islands were held/taken by the British/Italians, most acquired by the Germans, including Rhodes.

If, the Greeks you refer to were ‘killed’ by the Germans, it is logically most likely to have been in the latter years. Then, if operatives were training-up locals, typically it would be to act in unison with an invasion force. A handful of Partisans are not going to take on the German Army alone on a small island with nowhere to withdraw to. Churchill continued to support plans to invade Rhodes, ACCOLADE, but none ever took place. Rhodes eventually surrendered May ’45 to Force 281 when the war ended. Is it feasible that in lieu of hopes of invasion, a few men would have been landed to prepare locals? Yes of course it is. But in context of what was going on and planed with all the other islands, this is nothing extraordinary or remarkable.

Re the ‘massacre’, while I can find references to some – in texts, not the web – none mention anything on Rhodes. Then again, if the ‘massacre’ was actually one or two people shot and a house burnt, that’s nothing special I’m afraid.

Re the PRO, HERCULES, (the latter war plan), is just a guess on my part.

To search for available files, go to www.nationalarchives.g...earch.asp? and enter Hercules in the ‘Word or phrase’ box, and 1940 and 1945 in the ‘Year range’ boxes. Not all the Catalogue references it throws-up will be relevant, but I would guess those in the sections I sited earlier may be? Click-on the number at the end for a further breakdown of contents, then the ‘I’ symbols for more. If you go down to Kew and pull a file, you will find it’s probably a jumble of documents up to 6 inches thick.

If, you want to dive straight in with a SOE on Rhodes theory, try file HS 5/715 – “Dodecanese islands; Rhodes; CLARION, ERRATIC, RODEL, SYMPTON; voyage, landing and operational reports – 1943/1945”

And HS 5/585 – “Operations in Greece and Aegean: instructions and directives; Force 133 mission in Rhodes; relief supplies to Dodecanese islands; subversion of Polish troops in Cos and Leros; enemy situation in Aegean 1945; Force 142 operation at Kimolos; Force 281 plan for occupation of Dodecanese; attacks on Kallimache airfield; Force 292 plan to secure Leros – 1943/1945” ?

Amazing story ..........

thank you rob jones but it took another weird twist last night when a chap got in touch with me and told me that he has the book Prisoners of War British Army 1938 - 45.
And in it my grandad is listed as being in camp teschen 8B.
Which according to the gent is why his pow number is so low yet on the tag its says camp XX1B.
I am starting to chase my tail with this one now but I am not giving up.

I have also now found some pictures of my grandad in uniform and one that we think may well be him with what looks like
possibly the group that are supposed to be in the Rhodes piccy, I am awaiting me uncle to confirm if it is the picture from The bar in Rhodes.
I dont think it is myself but they are a right mixed bunch.
I have just now got to work out how to scan them and put them on here for you all to look at along with the service pay book.

I am sorry can any one tell me how you do it.
i have the photos in my pictures on my PC but who the heck do you get them on to
the web page.
i have tried to cut and paste but nothing happens.

Go to the Photo Gallery. Click on the upload button. You then load them directly from your C Drive. Once they have been uploaded. You will not see them until they have been authorised by a Forum Moderator. This will normally happen the same evening.

:yes:

thanks ap1 is that the best place and the way to put the pay book on show to the site aswell. sorry to keep asking but I am a novice at this sort of stuff :)

No problem David.

Post the paybook on the photo gallery, it give members a chance to have a look at the items. and express an opinion if required.

I have to say the cap badge on two of the pics looks very Non RWF/RA. Possibly a later unit?

Have you applied for his service record yet?

I am in the process of doing that but have been trying to make sure I have not over looked any other info.
I was abit worried about the badges myself but I know 100% that the photo taken without the cap on is him.
His Daughter found the photo in a sketch book that his Brother in law had used to do family sketchs while serving with the Heavy Mobile RAF unit in Italy.
The other two she thinks are him but as they came out of the same sketch book it could be his younger brother yet no sketch was done of either these two photos.