Timothy Armstrong – 63rd ATR

My father Timothy was one of the Argyll and Sutherland soldiers who were transferred to the 63rd.
Dad would never talk about the war and it was never discussed at home. When I grew old enough to understand and question, my mother told me that his experience at Belsen still gave him nightmares at times. He wrote to my mother every day that he could and she promised to give me the letters “one day”.

Unfortunately, on his death bed he made my mother promise to destroy them and she burned them so a valuable piece of history was lost. I hadn’t realised until now that it was this regiment who actually were first into Belsen. My mother was a bit vague about it and because after being wounded my father had been retrained as a cook, I was under the impression he had been brought in to help with trying to feed the prisoners who had been found there. I was aware that he was there right from the start and this now explains it.

Submitted by John Armstrong

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