M (Lines of Communications) Signal Company

[Tinhat47]

In my research adventures, several men from this Royal Engineers unit keep popping up. It appears the company served in Egypt but I know nothing more about it. Was it attached to a larger unit? Does the M signify the company like "SS" Signal Coy. or "L" Signal Coy.? The aforementioned companies always have quotation marks around the letter name, but this M Signal Company never does. Could the M stand for something else?

[sotonmate]

MR

Under the same War Diary reference (WO95/4719) there are several other Signal Units which have in their title the name of the area of Egypt they serviced. All,as "M" Company,were part of the Egypt/Palestine/Syria Lines of Communication.The dates span Nov 1915 to Mar 1919 for "M" Coy.

Sotonmate

[Tinhat47]

Thanks!

[Ron Clifton]

Hello Matt

The equivalent unit in France was L Signal Company, later expanded to a battalion. In that case, L stood for Lines of Communication and the corresponding unit in Egypt seems simply to have been given the next letter of the alphabet. There was a K Signal Company pre-war, based in Dublin and mainly responsible for linking up with the Irish telephone system.

The use of inverted commas seems to have been generally, but intermittently, applied to any Army unit with a non-numerical designation, e.g. "A" to "E" Air-line Sections, "F" to "P" Cable Sections and "Q" Wireless Section, all of which went to France with the original BEF.

Ron