EC0241

Contains 7 notebooks and a letter with poems and notes presumably taken while training. Much of the writing is illegible or difficult to read. Letter notes he is in B Company, 2nd Battalion of The Gordon Highlanders, Timber Station camp near Malton Yorkshire. Author was probably Scottish.


From Wikipedia:
The Gordon Highlanders was a line infantry regiment of the British Army that existed for 113 years, from 1881 until 1994 when it was amalgamated with the Queen's Own Highlanders (Seaforth and Camerons) to form the Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons) which was later merged with the Royal Scots Borderers, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland, a large regiment. The Gordon Highlanders took its name from the Clan Gordon and recruited principally from Aberdeen and the North-East of Scotland.

The 2nd Battalion was based in Malaya as part of the Singapore garrison and fought in the battle for Singapore in February 1942, surrendering along with 130,000 other British Commonwealth soldiers on 15 February. The men of this battalion suffered more casualties as Prisoners of War in Japanese captivity than they did during the fighting on Singapore Island and Malaya The 2nd Battalion was reformed in May 1942 from personnel of the 11th Battalion and fought with the 15th (Lowland) Infantry Division, throughout North West Europe. They formed part of 227th (Highland) Infantry Brigade - the Junior Brigade in the Division. They were involved in the heavy fighting around Cheux and Tourville-sur-Odon in Normandy, the fight for the Netherlands and in the Battle of Uelzen in Germany near to the end of the war.