The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

Ooops maybe should of posted in here before posting my first thread, where to start?, I've always had an interest in all things military, my father served in the Army with the Parachute Regiment, weekends with nothing to do we'd pop up to the Airborne Forces Museum at Browning Barracks, so I was going to be hampered from the start!.
My primary interests are the encampments and Airfields that grew up in the build up to D-Day and the units that occupied them, I'm particularly interested in the encampments and locations that 6th Airborne would have been. I live not far from Devizes on a former RAF site and the reminders of those war years are still visible if your willing to look, I'm also interested in the casualties of the conflict that are laid to rest in the county or immediate area, one such casualty I visited last thursday 5th June was a Paratrooper with the 8th Battalion whom was killed over Normandy before he could jump and brought back to RAF Blakehill Farm and was laid to rest in St Michaels Church, Watchfield just outside Shrivenham.
I combine all this with my other interest of motorbikes, which helps get too sites with a minimum of fuss, I've currently a VFR800 Vtec and an R1150GS, the GS comes in handy on the more unforgiving roads etc.
I'm interested to know if records for the camps are kept anywhere, as in site maps etc, would such things have been kept or once contracts were complete records lost to contractors or PSA/Works Flight type units and eventually destroyed (I'm aware that many of the airfield sites are held by the RAF Museum at Hendon but wondered if the national archives held similar for the army, and US forces)?.

Cheers

Plasticmoonraker; you may wish to consider a subscription to Fold3 that will give you access to US Army Records in Europe:

www.fold3.com/s.php?advanced=1#query=us+...9,899,893,853,878,95

Hello OneEightBit

Sorry to take so long replying to your message, I've been on holiday.

I was posted to Netheravon after the War, around October 1946 just before the Great Storm of 1946/47. At that time there was only a graveyard of gliders and just RAF personnel - Transport Command.

After The Storm all WAAF were posted to different parts of the country - I was sent to Heslington Hall, York.

Rose

What lovely stories, thank you Rose.

Dear Rose the WAAF site at Netheravon has now gone. I remember hearing about a man painting the gutters and another came up to him to ask how long he would be as they were about to pull it down. The Sick bay I believe has also gone but many of the black & white huts are still there. My mother had just married my father in 1946 and they moved to Netheravon where Dad bought the local garage. So we knew a lot of RAF people.

The other comment of yours about only moving around in a small area of the camp. People often ask about what you would have seen of the airfields that you would be stationed on and you have just answered the question.

As for the Gliders, they were stored in 'Glider Bottom' actually Figheldean bottom and we were as kids all ways told about this mysterious place full of gliders but we were too young to see it. The Red Lion at Chisenbury had a glider body as a hen house until about 20years ago.

[IMG]/community/146716=16861-netheravon GB.jpg[/img] Richard

Hello everyone, I am just about to start volunteering at the100th BG Memorial Museum at Thorpe Abbott (station 139). I would like to thank everyone who has had input to this site as it has helped me enormously in my quest to assist visitors to our base. I hope in the future that I meet many of you when you visit our little corner of the world.

Welcome Janet, no doubt I will see you up there at some point, I usually pop in at least a couple of times a month to check in

Hi Janet, welcome to the the ARG forum

Greetings all! I'm Paul, I live in Dorset and have a very deep passion/obsession with all this flying. Very much into aviation photography and also plastic melting. Lastly I'm very interested in airfield archeology and enjoy prowling around airfields to see what I can stumble over.