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Remembered Today:

Convalescing in Monte Carlo - March 1916


SteveMarsdin

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Good evening,

I've temporarily got in my possession* a personal diary from an officer in the 4th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment. A lot of the entries are very mundane in nature, yet it is very interesting matching days to events (e.g one day he saw Poincare and Joffre on a train in August 1916 and later Haig and the Prince of Wales, which ties in with their meeting). He mentions a fellow officer killed by "a shell at 10.31 a.m" on one particular day and the name and date match the CWGC record.

He was in Flanders in 1915, early 1916 when he was taken ill with "trench fever". He then spent several weeks convalescing on the French riviera; was it common for officers to be allowed to recuperate in such locations or was he very fortunate ?

* The auctioneers that I help at have it for sale, along with his medals. I have done the research I need for the cataloguing; I have checked his London Gazette and Ancestry records, found his file at the National Archives but won't have time to access it before the sale.

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I have seen one instance of an Officer convalescing in the south of France too,from a service file but can't recall the name and period.

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According to E S Turner in ​Dear Old Blighty '.....Gradually the Riviera became a huge rest and recuperation centre for wounded officers, tended as often as not by well-born ladies. Lord Clark recalled that his parents travelled to their villa in Cap Martin where they turned their villa into a hospital for French officers. But the holiday appeal never died out. Even in the doom-struck winter of 1917-18 British newspapers carried advertisements headed 'Where to Winter: Monte Carlo'.....'

Something in this diary of a Medical Officer about Lady Michelham's convalescent home for officers at Cap Martin. Scroll down to December 1916

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/philsnet/T%20Hampson%20WW1%20Diary%20100.htm

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Thanks both of you. I think that's the place Caryl, I'll check tomorrow.

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Yes, it was Lady Michelham's convalescent home, that, and other accounts I have since found suggest the normal stay was two or three weeks, 2ndLt Sanderson stayed for five !

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In the first few months, when he's in Flanders he usually names places in full in block capitals (like in some war diaries I've seen) but in september he seems to start using a basic code.

Having spent an hour trying to work it out, I realise i'll never be a code-breaker - all he does is leave a space where the vowels are !!! Albert is LB RT, Mametz is M M TZ although he adds an R to Contalmaison which is written C NTR LM S N,

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In possibly quite different circumstances, my uncle Sgt A E Anderson no 136 3rd Pioneers AIF was permitted to travel to

Nice on leave between 19th Feb 1919 to 8th March. This was probably due to Australian authorities wondering what to

do with all their troops prior to shipping back home. As further consolation he spent some months studying dairying in

Jersey prior to shipping home later in the year.

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