No.2188361, Private, Terence George MILLER
Aged 19
|
Terence George Miller was born in Swaffham Bulbeck on 8th January 1921 (Chesterton Q1-1921 3B:833) son of Thurza Mahala MILLER later married to Harold BUTLER.
Apparently he was not accurate about his age when enlisting and there can be confusion with another Chesterton registered birth of a Terence George MILLER. His family use the spelling TERRANCE, the Army and CWGC use Terence. In the 1939 register, at East View, High Street, Swaffham Bulbeck were his mother Thurza M.BUTLER [16-2-1900] and step-father Harold BUTLER [31-8-1895] road foreman, and sister Maureen R [2-7-1935] later MATTHEWS. There is one closed record. |
|
CWGC have his age as 22. The R.M.S. Lancastria was sunk on 17th June 1940 in Operation Ariel, two week after the evacuation from Dunkirk. By the mid-afternoon of 17 June, she had embarked an unknown number (estimates range from 4,000 up to 9,000), of civilian refugees and line-of-communication troops (such as Pioneer and RASC soldiers) and RAF personnel. The ship's official capacity was 2,200 including the 375-man crew. Her captain had been instructed by the Royal Navy to "load as many men as possible without regard to the limits set down under international law". At 1350 hrs, during an air-raid, the nearby Oronsay, a 20,000-ton Orient Liner, was hit on the bridge by a German bomb. Lancastria was free to depart and the captain of the British destroyer HMS Havelock advised her to do so, but without a destroyer escort against possible submarine attack, her captain decided to wait. In another air raid, Lancastria was bombed at 1548 hrs by Junkers Ju 88 aircraft from 2 Gruppe-Kampfgeschwader 30. Direct hits caused the ship to list first to starboard then to port; she rolled over and sank within twenty minutes. There were 2,477 survivors. 160 of the burials in Pornic cemetery are un-identified and the special memorials record the names of those whose grave could not be accurately located. Terence was originally buried as an unknown British soldier but later exhumed, identified and re-interred, in Poric, on 8th September 1947.  
photo; Pierre Vandervelden www.inmemories.com click here to go to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for full cemetery/memorial details |
