John Cowley saying hello

[John Cowley]

Hello to everyone.
I am brand new to the site but ive joined in the hope that someone may be able to help me trace my grandfather Joseph Harle.
I know from talking to my mother that he was an anti aircraft gunner attached to the merchant navy and the story goes that his ship was
torpedoed and they spent 3 weeks at sea in a lifeboat.She thinks it was around august 1942 but the story is very patchy and any
information we had about it was lost years ago in a fire when i was very young.
I wrote to the army personnel centre in glasgow and they posted his service record to me but it says nothing of his time at sea or which
ships he served on.
The imformation i got is as follows.
Joseph Harle. Born 17/9/1911
Broadmires,Nettlesworth,County Durham
Army number 1770578
Enlisted 20/2/1941 Edinburgh
Attached to 53rd AA driver trng regt R A
Posted to 1 maratime AA battery 13/5/1941
Discharged 7/2/1943
This is all i have to go off so i would be very grateful for any advice or imformation to point me in the right direction.
Many thanks
John

[cappy]

morning john there are people on this site which may be able to point you in the right direction or help .......best wishes cappy

[Mike Hall]

John,
Welcome to the site,we hope you find everything you are looking.
There is weath of information amongst the membership on here.
someone will be along to help you in the near future.
In the meantime please take the time to have a look at what we offer.

Mike

[DeepSea]

Maritime Regt. DEMS records are hard to find. When you applied for his records did you ask in regard to see if there was a copy of his "Maritime Card" as this would have listed the ships he served on. Not all have survived and as Hugh will verify, it is then almost impossible to find unless we can find at least one ship he served on.

If he was discharged in 1943 and you believe he had spent three weeks in a lifeboat it is possible it was due to effects of this being the reason for his discharge.

[John Cowley]

Thanks very much for your advice. I shall write back and ask for a copy of his maritime card if it still exists.
It says on his record that he was permanently unfit for any form of military service so you can only imagine what
they went through.
Thanks again
John

[Ron B Manderson]

welcome to the site John.
I'm sure you will get plenty of Clues.
Ron the batcave