Guard duty?

[janecavell]

Please could the uniform experts out there give their verdicts on this photo? I'm waiting for a higher-res copy in the hope that the shoulder titles will become legible, but in the meantime this is the best I've got.

Thank you!

[Nigel Marshall]

Well, Poppy, I'm not an expert by a long way, but I notice that all the men wear the steel helmet, which dates the photo to mid 1916 onwards.

They are all wearing the same kind of ammunition pouches which are not the 1908 pattern webbing which you'd expect to see on a front-line soldier.

Does this mean we are looking at a reserve battalion on Home Service?

It also looks like the Lance Corporal, kneeling left, has a wound stripe on his left cuff.

Are there any clues on the rear of the photo?

Studio name or location, any annotations at all?

Cheers,

Nigel

[janecavell]

Hello Nigel

Thanks for your insights, which are very helpful.

At the moment I only have an electronic copy of the picture, with no further details. I'll quiz the owner in case there are any more useful clues and to see if I can get a close-up of the shoulder titles.

[Muerrisch]

The wound badge confirms a date not before July 1916.

[John Thorne]

Interesting photo. The equipment is Infantry Equipment, Pattern 1914, and the rifle slings are 1914 Pattern as well. This fits is well with an earliest date of 1916, and has been pointed out, was generally used for training and New Army units. The rifles appear to be SMLE Mk. III*. which would have been the very latest model in in 1916. I wonder if a training battalion would have been issued with the latest weapons? I.E. Patt. '14 was (mostly) slowly phased out of service as supplies of Patt. '08 were built up, but it was certainly in use in some units all they way through the War.

[centurion]

And what is the corporal carrying on his left hip? Looks like a half circular bucket.

[Andrew Upton]

And what is the corporal carrying on his left hip? Looks like a half circular bucket.

It's the Small Pack of his webbing - it hasn't got anything in it (note the empty ammo pouches), so there's nothing to keep it in shape.

[Wardog]

Empty pouches and small pack, no SBR or any anti gas kit. I would think probably in the UK. Possibly a Service Battalion, looks to be single line S/T so not Territorials, July 1916 onwards. Regards, Paul.

[janecavell]

Thank you all for all your most helpful comments, which make the photo so much more meaningful. It is amazing how many clues are there, if you know where to look.

By cropping the image I can manage a slightly less fuzzy look at one of the lads . . .

It's still not enough to read the shoulder title though the left-hand edge looks straight, which would rule out some regiments with curvy first letters (unless it is just an optical illusion). I look forward to discovering much more about how to spot shoulder titles in Grumpy's new thread on the subject.

Thanks again

Jane

[headgardener]

I'm thinking 'Middlesex'.

[janecavell]

Empty pouches and small pack, no SBR or any anti gas kit. I would think probably in the UK. Possibly a Service Battalion, looks to be single line S/T so not Territorials, July 1916 onwards. Regards, Paul.

Paul, I'm a real newbie when it comes to all the military jargon: could you please translate SBR and S/T? Thank you!

[Stanley_C_Jenkins]

My best guess is that they may be guarding Leafield Wireless Station - on the assumption that the photograph was taken somewhere in Oxfordshire (which we do not know for sure).

[Wardog]

Sorry Poppy, Small Box Respirator=gas mask, and S/T=shoulder title, which would have been brass unit initial letters or county name etc. Territorials would have had a T over battalion number over county name. Regards, Paul.

[janecavell]

Paul, thank you for explaining those acronyms.

Stanley, I am still awaiting further information from the owner of the photo. The photo may well have a West Oxfordshire connection, though this remains to be ascertained. In the meantime, do you know where I could find out more about Leafield wireless station and who might have been tasked with guarding it? Would a local regiment have been most likely to do this?

Thanks

Jane

P.S. I see from this History of Marconi that work had started on the Leafield wireless station by December 1914 when the Post Office cancelled the contract with Marconi. Was the station used for military purposes during the war, or was the whole project put on ice? I have not yet found references to it being a functioning wireless station until late 1921, but I suppose any military uses would have been hush-hush so unlikely to get into the press.

[janecavell]

For comparison, here's a photo I've found in the collection of Witney & District Museum, of Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry guard at Leafield radio station, dated August 1914. (If there's anyone from SOFO reading this, do you have any records relating to the wireless station?)

[headgardener]

Hi Poppy,

What's 'SOFO' in your last post? (looks like it's not just Wardog who's good at using abbreviations....)

And in respect to your original picture (the guys with the tin hats and bayonets), personally I wouldn't get too excited about a possible link to Leafield. Of course it's possible, but it look like any number of photos that I've seen of guys larking around, posing for pictures, in a UK training camp; it certainly looks like a fairly standard camp barrack block in the background.

[janecavell]

Sorry, headgardener, guilty as charged.

SOFO = Soldiers of Oxfordshire

[Moonraker]

On 20/06/2010 at 11:19, janecavell said:

For comparison, here's a photo I've found in the collection of Witney & District Museum, of Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry guard at Leafield radio station, dated August 1914. (If there's anyone from SOFO reading this, do you have any records relating to the wireless station?)

Almost 14 years later: interesting photo. Leafield was part of the Imperial Wireless Chain, the building of which commenced before the Great War and was halted shortly after it began. On December 30, 1914, the Post Office formally notified Marconi's that it had decided not to proceed with the Chain, and work stopped at Leafield and Devizes. A memorandum of June 12, 1914 by the Committee of Imperial Defence's committee responsible for the wireless Chain stated that "it was not proposed to take any measures for the defence of the receiving station at Devizes in time of war" though the station at Leafield would be surrounded by a fence. (NA file: CAB 16/32). (Nigel West, in GCHQ [Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1986, page 16], implies that "fortifications", including fences and bullet-proof shutters, for the Devizes site were being discussed in December 1913).

The main reason for my belated contribution to this thread is that when I saw a 1915 plan of the Devizes station at what was then the Public Record Office, I spotted an arrow and "Langley" on the edge and I've always assumed that this was the Langley east of Slough, the more so because a Royal Engineers unit moved from Slough to the Devizes station c1915. It turns out that it was/is a hamlet west of Leafield and where the masts and huts were built.

(Similarly the Devizes station was actually built close to the village Bishop's Cannings.)

Sadly janecavell last visited us in July 2010, so won't see this pearl grain of information.

 

[Michelle Young]

@janecavell may work, who knows? 

[FROGSMILE]

1 hour ago, Michelle Young said:

@janecavell may work, who knows? 

Perhaps she still has some association with the online Soldiers of Oxfordshire Organisation (SOFO) and might be contacted through there.