Putting in for Recce

                     On 13^th October 1943 Dick signed a preference form

 for the Recce Corps

with a ‘family or territorial claim’ for the 61^st Reconnaissance Regiment, then stationed in Kent.

Copy of Record       Preference form

 5731671                        AGE     22 years  3 months                                                 299440

(M.S. Form E.C.1)                                                                                   ARMY FORM E.562

OFFICER CADET TRAINING UNIT            1A

            77 TROOP        FIRST APPOINTMENTS EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS              B

FORM to be filled up by successful Candidates for appointments to Emergency Commissions in the Army

Name in full       WILLIAMS, RICHARD KELNER      

1.Regiment or Corps of the British or Indian Army for which I desire to express a preference. Officers wishing for Scottish, Irish, or Welsh Regiments should state their connection, if any, with the country in question. (Not more than three Regiments or Corps should be specified. Family or Territorial claims should be fully stated.)	(1)   RECCE CORPS	Family or Territorial Claims (if any), to be fully stated
		61
	(2)
	(3)
2. (For applicants for Household Cavalry and Foot Guards only) Have you been accepted by the Colonel of the Regiment for which you have applied above? (NOTE. No commissions in Regiments of Household Cavalry or Foot Guards will be granted unless applicants have previously been accepted by the Colonels of the Regiments concerned.)

 Signature          RK Williams

Address to which notification of appointment should be sent.  Any change should be at once notified to the War Office

“St Margarets” Sea Lane    PAGHAM  SUSSEX.     (To be written in BLOCK LETTERS)

Date                 13.10.’43

NOTE.-  This Form must be filled and forwarded to “THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE,  THE WAR OFFICE (M.S. 2.), WHITEHALL, LONDON, S.W.1,” through the Officer Commanding, Officer Cadet Training Unit.

(2331) Wt.29614/1238.  20,000.  9/39.  W.R.M.  Gp.69s

 

 

13th October 2013 – the official Italian Government declares war on Germany.

14th October 1943 – half of the prisoners in Sobibor, 300 men and women, escape in an uprising (although only 47 survived the war). Sobibor, in eastern Poland was constructed in spring 1942 and by the time of the uprising at least 167,000 people, mainly Jewish, had been murdered there. Although the killing centre was dismantled shortly after the uprising and kept secret by the Nazis, it has been estimated that over 250,000 people died there.  (From WW2-net Timelines and  and The United States Holocaust Museum.) 

14^th October 1943 – after suffering heavy losses over Germany the US Air Force calls off long-range unescorted daylight raids. (From Chronology of World War II.  See 'precision bombing in daylight.)

 

16th October 1943 – beginning of the Roman ‘Razzia’ or round-up of the Jews in Rome.  Although in September 1943 the Germans had levied a ransom in gold for the safety of the Roman Jews, which had been paid, the SS still proceeded to seize the Jews in Rome and deport them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 1,800 were sent to the death camp and all were killed. However, for every Roman Jew deported 10 escaped, with the Italian people helping them to hide.

In 1933 there were about 50,000 Jews living in Italy. Anti-Jewish discrimination laws were introduced in 1938 but the Italian military authorities refused to participate in the mass murder of the Jews and Jews were generally safe from deportation in Italy or Italian-occupied territory until the Italian Armistice. More than 40,000 Jews survived the Holocaust in Italy.  (See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for Rome and Italy.)

17th October 1943 – completion of the Thailand to Burma railway, between Bangkok in Thailand and Rangoon (now Yangon) in Burma (Myanmar). Built by the forced labour of 180,000 Asian labourers and 60,000 Allied Prisoners of War (half of them British) for the Japanese military. Conditions and treatment were so horrific that half of the Asians and over 12,000 of the Allied PoWs died or were killed – the railway construction is viewed as a war crime. ( See the Second World War Experience Centre and Far East Prisoners of War.)

 

19th October 1943 – the Treblinka death camp in eastern Poland, is closed and steps taken to completely dismantle it, returning the site to farmland to hide the atrocities.  Between July 1942 and August 1943 25 German SS men assisted by 100 Ukrainian auxiliaries murdered around 800,000 Jews and Roma at Treblinka.

20th October 1943 – creation of the United Nations War Crimes Commission  by a meeting of Government representatives of seventeen of the Allied Nations, including all of the major powers except the USSR at the Foreign Office in London.

 

 

22nd October 1943 – more than 10,000 people die in the explosions and fires caused by a bombing attack on the city of Kassel, in central Germany. 

This was also the beginning of Operation Corona – the RAF used native German speakers to impersonate and broadcast as German Air Defence Officers. When the Germans switched to using women controllers in November so did the RAF.