Author: Zoe Tolman, Assistant Archivist

During 1944, a group of REME soldiers were sheltered by the Marinus Gibbels family in their barn in Sint-Oedenrode, just north of Eindhoven. Some 60 years later, the quest to track down these soldiers and find out what happened to them after they left was begun by Tony Van Dijk, a grandson of Marinus Gibbels, who had emigrated to Canada with his parents in 1951. The only clues the family had were a shield the soldiers had drawn for the family, along with a list of their names, and two portrait photographs, one of which included the name and address of the individual featured. This obviously wasn’t much information to go on and the search has passed between many hands over the years, both in and out of the family. In 2022, it came to us, after it was noted that the rank “Cfn” (Craftsman), listed by many of the unit members, as well as the term “lad” (more usually LAD or Light Aid Detachment), suggested the unit was a REME one.

Drawing of the shield of the Second Army, including names.

Tracking down an individual with only their surname is a near impossible task. Some names are unique enough that there might be only one individual in REME with it, but typically that is not the case. It certainly isn’t the case when one of the names in question is Smith! Our best hope lay in tracer cards - essentially index cards which were used to keep track of the Other Ranks. They feature an individual’s service number, surname and initials, as well as their units and postings and are arranged in our archive by surname. The plan therefore was to cross-reference all of the different soldiers with these surnames and find a common unit which tied all 15 together. This would obviously be a massive undertaking. We have two drawers of Smiths alone and each of those belonged to multiple units. Now imagine matching all of those units to the pile of potential Littles and their many units and so on with all of the other names – you can hopefully see how colossal a task this could be!

Thankfully we had two major advantages for the search; we had initials for one of the soldiers from his photograph and we had volunteers to help. Morgan and Gavin arrived at the museum as part of Morgan’s work experience. He spent some time with all the other departments but, when we realised the scale of this project, we asked if they might come and help us in the Archives for the rest of their stay. Their first step was finding Cfn Underwood, or more precisely Cfn T R D Underwood. We actually didn’t find him at first because his handwriting on the photograph made the T look like more of a J and there were no J R D Underwoods to be found. We’re quite used to slightly dodgy handwriting in the archives, so we suggested they try the search again with a few common variations. Sure enough, a T R D Underwood was instead found.

The writing of Cfn Underwood’s name, which we had to decipher.

He was the only soldier in REME at that time with those initials. So, once we had his card, we no longer had to cross-reference all the possible units but only those already featured on his - a significantly easier task. We then tried to arrange the rest of the names in order of commonality (leaving the two drawers of Smiths until last!) to cut down the cross-referencing even more and were able to identify the common unit. This was a REME unit attached to the Royal Artillery, specifically 59 Medium Artillery Regiment RA LAD.

Over many months of hard work and diligence, Morgan and Gavin eventually found cards for the rest of the REME soldiers. Going from having just surnames (essentially impossible to be sure you have the correct individual) to having a unit and their initials was a massive step forward in the investigation. Yet we could do even better and so it was then time to find first names for all these men. The tracer cards may only give initials but we also have a series of books called Discharge Registers, used to list men as they ended their Other Rank service (through release, transfer, commission, etc).  These do not give units but do have their service number, surname and full first names! The registers are grouped by service number but are not in order. For example, to find G Smith 2 083 411, you need to go to the registers for the series beginning 2, go to the S index in each one and look for any “Smith, G”s listed to get their page number. Eventually one of them will be the correct Smith G, as the number will match, and you will find out the G is for George (not Graham or Greg or Gary etc as it could’ve been).

This search is actually the longer part of the task! Some number series are short, only 8 books or so, but others, like the series beginning 7 or 14, have upwards of 40 to go through and there is no way of knowing where the name might feature (it’s also not uncommon to lose focus for a moment, miss the name and have to check the whole series again!). The process is not helped when Smith, the most common name we had, went by the wrong initial entirely – his card has him down as S Smith, not G Smith. His full name was actually George Sidney Smith and we can only assume that he went by his middle name enough that the clerk doing his tracer card did not know about his first name. The discharge registers, tied in more heavily to formal paperwork, listed both. To find him, Morgan and Gavin had to look through all the Smiths in the 2 series, so his discovery is thanks to their perseverance and hope. Without this painstaking work however, any future research would obviously be looking for the wrong Smiths entirely!

The tracer card for S Smith.

In answer to the family’s query about what had happened to these men, the cards confirm that the REME soldiers all survived the war to be discharged. Beyond that, however, is beyond the scope of our material. A great deal of effort was put in by Doreen Miller, a friend of the family, and JP Jeffels, a genealogist, to use the names we had found to investigate further and perhaps find some of the families of the soldiers. Since then, we’ve very kindly been given a wealth of genealogical information on all of the soldiers (including even the gunners!). This includes their lives before and after their service, as well as more personal information gleaned from the families tracked down, many of whom had never heard of the barn refuge before this project.

We’re always delighted to hear the stories of REME personnel and so we’re very grateful to Mrs Miller for her assistance during this project, to Morgan and Gavin for their extreme dedication and hard work with the cards and to Mr Jeffels for the research he has provided. All the material will be kept together in our reference section as an account of 59 Medium Regt LAD and their stay in the barn. We hope that one day we might also receive some of the original material the families still have in order to go alongside this lovely tale and be preserved in the archives for future generations to discover. Finally, our sincerest thanks must go to the Marinus Gibbels family and Tony - firstly for so kindly sheltering these soldiers during the war, but also for keeping the story and search alive through so many years.

Find out more about REME units and their movements during the North-West Europe campaign of 1944-45 in our D-Day to VE Day Campaign. Follow along on Facebook or X (Twitter). Take a look at posts we've shared.