August 15th, 2025 - The 80th Anniversary of VJ Day

 I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was a bit slow remembering that today is the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VJ Day.¹

I imagine my Mum, in particular, would have had something to say about that, both as an ex-service woman (post war), but also because one of her aunts was later married to a man who had been a rubber planter, and who, I believe, spent much of the war imprisoned in Changi Prison, on Singapore.

Thinking about the day, there didn't seem to be an obvious way of easily identifying servicemen who might have been involved. But the news today reminded me about the "Calling Blighty" films, short films, made by servicemen in the Far East, between 1944-1946, as messages home to their families.² 

On searching the database, I discovered a recording of a Joseph PARRY, from Thatto Heath, Lancashire.³

I might be duplicating research already carried out by the team (since it isn't that difficult to trace some people, these days.) But I thought I would see what I could find out about Joseph.

From the film, as well as mention of his Mum and Dad, we get the names of "Flo", "Davy", "Ronnie", "Ruth", and "Mary". [If I'm hearing them correctly.]

His service number is given on the site, 1731832, but no regiment, or rank. 

My first port of call was the National Archives, from which I learnt that Joseph's records are closed until 2035⁴:

However, as you can see, the entry does give his date of birth, 6 September 1919.  

Using this, I can see that there are at least nine trees on Ancestry for him, although some have the usual issues, such as place names allocated to the USA, a lack of information about vital events, and also several of them are private. 

I am going to ignore the trees to start with, and just see what I can find out using the information I have.

I started with just his name, and the keyword of his service number.  That found me two records in each of FindMyPast and Ancestry

From FindMyPast

First name(s) Joseph

Last name Parry

Service number 1731832

Regiment The Royal Regiment Of Artillery

Year 1940

Country Great Britain

View the original source View the record's source 

Original source Royal Artillery Attestations 1883-1942

Record set World War 2 Allies Collection

Category Military, armed forces & conflict

Subcategory Second World War

Collections from Americas, Australasia, Great Britain, Ireland, UK None

First name(s) Joseph

Last name Parry

Birth year -

Birth place -

Age -

Attestation year 1940

Service number 1731832

Former service number -

Record set Royal Artillery Attestations 1883-1942

Category Military, armed forces & conflict

Subcategory Regimental & Service Records

Collections from Great Britain, UK None

Since his attestation was in 1940, he, unfortunately, appears in the later books, which (according to the description on FindMyPast) give less information than the earlier ones, namely just:

 

Army number

Full name/s

Details of transfer to other Corps or cause of becoming non-effective (including date)

And any abbreviations need looking up in the King's regulations, which were published in 1914, 1923, and 1940.

In Joseph's entry, the last column shows "Field 1/9/44 (7028A)" (in red), "17/10/46 Z/T"(in blue), and "(FIELD BRANCH)" stamped in purple ink.  Under his name there is also "134/113" (written like a fraction).  

I'm not going to stop to find the relevant King's Regulations now, as I would like to post this today. But I might come back to the abbreviations later.

From Ancestry

A card appears for Joseph in the database, "UK, World War II Royal Artillery Tracer Cards, 1939-1948", which comes from the Royal Artillery Museum; Salisbury Plain, Larkhill, Wiltshire.  These cards were used by the Royal Artillery, in order to show where a soldier was, at any particular time.

There are a lot more abbreviations on this one, which, again, I'm not going to try to identify straight away. But from the card, there is the information that Joseph enlisted on 12/12/1940, and his unit was the "304, EA A/TK Regt." There is then a date, "1/9/44", in what looks to be the same ink. Above the "unit" is written "BY5/44", in blue.

Underneath that, are several lines in blue:

216/45 302 (EA F Regt 18/7/45

254/45 Depot RA 24/10/45

Release

Unit 93/46 [?]hist (&) 10/7/46

Release

1484/46 Z/T Ris: 17/10/46

And, finally, more in black

48/Recs/53 DiscPara 234-11, 20/4/53

Docs IY/E Lib

The second record on Ancestry is from the database "UK, British Army World War II Medal Cards, 1939-1945." Unfortunately, the actual image is only available on Fold3, which I don't have a subscription for, so I am using Ancestry's transcription, since it provides some useful details:

Name Joseph Parry

Rank Lance Bombardier

Birth Date 1919

Award Date 15 Apr 1950

Discharge Date 17 Oct 1946

Applicant's Delivery Address 498. Sutton Heath Rd Thatto Heath St Helens Lancs

Service Group Number 33

Class of Release A

Service Number 1731832

Regiment 304. (E A) Regt. Field, (R. A.)

Stars/Medals Issued 1939-45; Burma; Defence; War

Since Joseph did not enlist until 1940, he will appear in the 1939 Register - at this point, I returned to the pedigrees on Ancestry, since I had noticed, in the listing of the nine trees, that a couple of them did include the 1939 Register.

And, yes, following up the image for those entries does show a PARRY family who live at 498 Sutton Heath Road, St Helens.⁵

Not all of the family are visible, which indicates some might even still be alive. But the visible entries are:

Sarah PARRY, 9 May 1891, M, Unpaid Domestic Duties

Florence PARRY, (later to become CROSS), 3 Aug 1923, S, Greengrocery Shop Assistant

Joseph PARRY, 6 Sep 1919 S Coal miner (Haulage) Below 

[There are four "officially closed" records below this]

According to the pedigrees, Joseph married a Ruth Mildred SMITH, in 1946, and he died in 1996.  I suspect his future wife might be the "Ruth" mentioned in the film.

As well as Florence, who was visible on the 1939 Register, several trees show a sibling "May" (b.1928). But no other siblings, which is disappointing, since I had been going to stop at this point.

But now I 'need' to find out who else Joseph was referring to in the film. ☺

So, first I'm trying FindMyPast, in case other names have been uncovered in their version of the 1939 Register. 

It turns out one of the four has - Ronald, born 8 March 1925. So that's probably "Ronnie."

The Ancestry trees indicated that the maiden name for Sarah, Joseph's mother, was "Phillips". So I started by checking the GRO Index for births of the known children, to confirm that maiden name, and found the following entries:

Joseph: GRO Reference: 1919  D Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1547

Florence: GRO Reference: 1923  S Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1419

Ronald: GRO Reference: 1925  M Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1308

Since I can find these three entries, which match to the information I have, I'm going to narrow down the search to just the Prescot district, and include the mother's maiden name, to see who else I can find over the years after June 1917, when Sarah PHILLIPS married James PARRY.

Unfortunately, PARRY is a 'frequently occurring' surname so, even narrowing the search terms down like that, produces several 'extras', who are unlikely to be relevant:

Robert: GRO Reference: 1915  D Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1388 

Lily: GRO Reference: 1917  D Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1131

Robert Lloyd: GRO Reference: 1919  J Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1116

[Joseph fits here 1919] 

Albert Charles: GRO Reference: 1921  S Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1484

[Florence fits here 1923]

[Ronald fits here 1925]

Muriel: GRO Reference: 1926  S Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1347

Thomas: GRO Reference: 1928  S Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1150

May: GRO Reference: 1928  D Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1209

Donald: GRO Reference: 1931  S Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1273 

Hilda; GRO Reference: 1933  S Quarter in PRESCOT  Volume 08B  Page 1172

The first three entries can be discounted, Robert Lloyd's birth being too close to Joseph's birth, and the previous two not being shown in the 1921 census, which I later looked at.⁶

The "females 1927+/-2 years" search results showed four entries without the mother's maiden name, along with one having the maiden name "HORNBY" (which seems a bit strange!) 

The "males 1932+/-2 years" search results showed eight entries without the mother's maiden name, one of which was a David. ("Davy" seemed to be one of the people Joseph named in the film.)

The "females 1932+/-2 years" search results also showed eight entries without the mother's maiden name.

There is an issue on the GRO site, in the later years, with regard to showing the mother's maiden names. The site also doesn't contain birth entries between 1934 - 1984.

So, I resorted to FreeBMD.  That just gave me the same people as above (with the exception of the Thomas in 1928, who wasn't found, for some reason). However, it did allow me to identify that the mother's maiden name of the "David" was MATTHEWS, so he isn't relevant. 

From the trees on Ancestry, and the 1921 census for the PARRY family, I know Sarah had been married before, her first husband, Peter TWIST, dying at Gallipoli.⁷ The 1921 census shows two children from the first marriage, Peter b. 1912, and Gladys b. 1914 - but those names don't seem to relate to the people named by Joseph in the film.

So I think I am reaching the end of what I can easily discover today.  One last attempt - any newspaper references to the PARRY family in Thatto Heath? (No)

So, quickly rechecking before posting - and I realise that, whereas Ancestry normally seem to batch together all the trees relating to a particular person, the set of nine trees I'd found earlier on Ancestry are not the only suggested ones - there is another batch, of five trees.  These indicate that the birth registrations for Muriel, and for Donald, possibly belong to the same family, and that there is then another, "unknown" daughter.

Have I misheard some of the names? Or might they be other people, rather than his siblings, that Joseph is naming?

It is very tempting, given the price of pdf birth certificates these days, to purchase those in order to resolve the issue, one way or the other.

But I am going to resist the temptation, and call it a day.  It only remains for me, over the next day or so, to contact all of the tree owners, to see if they are aware of the "Calling Blighty" films, and the possibility that one of their relatives - maybe even an ancestor - is shown in one.  

I hope I have done him justice.

Notes and Sources

1. VJ Day and the 80th Anniversary: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_over_Japan_Day

A Government site, marking the VE Day and VJ Day anniversaries https://ve-vjday80.gov.uk/

2. The "Calling Blighty" films: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/north-west-film-archive/projects/calling-blighty

3. The film excerpt by Joseph PARRY: https://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/blighty/record.php?token=1534cbl13234Li38711B12962b4

4. Joseph PARRY: National Archives result https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C20049000

5. 1939 Register entry: 1939 Register reference: RG 101/4607G

6. 1921 Census reference: RG 15/18047, ED 48, Sch 174; Book: 18047

7. Peter TWIST, on CWGC site: https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/683686/peter-twist/