The Forest of Dean Section of the Gloucestershire regiment (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Sunday, June 09, 2013, 15:05 (4187 days ago) @ downunder

Hi again,
it's nice to see your still posting given the interesting events of yesterday on the cricket field ;-)

I'm NOT an expert at all, I suspect other members such as Harry Brook know far more than I do, hopefully he'll see this post. However I am very interested in all things military and particularly the Glosters since learning my mum's cousin died as part of the Dunkirk rearguard fought by his 2nd Battalion of the Glosters, the 5th Bn were also there. Because it's more recent than WW1, say, its more difficult to research the official Records of WW2 soldiers if not a close descendant. However I've still never heard of an "official" FoD element of the Glosters in WW2, as there was in WW1 and the WW2 Home Guard, but then again I've not really researched it that much ?. I have seen records(below) of another Forester who died the day before my ancestor, and from the same 2nd Bn, so perhaps that was the FoD element of the Regiment ?.
http://www.sungreen.co.uk/Mitcheldean-Dean-Glos/Pte_M_W_Burns_Glos_Regt.html

This site is a great guide to researching soldiers who died in WW2.
http://www.ww2cemeteries.co.uk/research.htm

The Regimental Museum website is;
http://www.glosters.org.uk/research/
For WW2 see this page
http://www.glosters.org.uk/textonly_timeline/6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_of_Gloucestershire_Museum

This unofficial site may also help you.
http://www.glosters.org/

Regimental Association (The "Rifles")
http://www.rgbw-association.org.uk/forest.htm

This pdf file contains information about the various military archives of Gloucestershire.
http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=11841&p=0

I can strongly recommend you browsing and enquiring on the speciallist forums, I've found them very helpfull indeed and have never attracted spam email etc etc. This was excellent for me.
http://ww2talk.com/forums/index.php

Such forums often have Unit Diarys, for example, so one can discover where and what your ancestor may have been doing and, perhaps, how be died (or hopefully not).
Also carefull use of search engines including a surname & unit may often yield excellent results, thats how I found the above forum in the first instance, researching the Wars is a very popular subject and has resulted in many such forums, personal sites, etc etc. These are particulary good as the official route of enquiry for WW2 is via the Ministry Of Defence and even for close decendants can apparently be a very timeconsuming & difficult process.

Hope this helps, if you have more specific info such as a name etc I'll be happy to try and help more.

Take care, Jeff