Mitchell and Agnew disappeared Nov 1920 at Macroom

[headgardener]

I don't understand how the Artists Rifles fits-in to the overall picture. They later became associated with special forces - but could this have been the case as early as the 1920s?

No, that was a much later development.

Could he have retained a TA commission in the Artist's Rifles while serving with the RICAD?

The reference to his service with the Artists' is almost certainly where he did his officer cadet training. The 28th Londons a.k.a. the Artist' rifles (as opposed to the 15th Londons which you stated in the earlier post) comprised of an infantry battalion serving in France and an Officer Cadet Battalion in Essex. Your man would have been commissioned from their OCB into the Berkshires.

There's a roll of men who served with the regiment (an online copy is available on archive.com), so you should find your man's name there, but probably very few other details apart from name, rank, number, honours and awards, and there might be a reference to him bering killed together with date of death, but the entry in the roll of honour is only as accurate as the information forwarded to the battalion at the time. It contains a number of ommissions and inaccuracies, so don't read too much into anything like this that you come across.

Edit; there was a 3rd battalion of the 28th Londons, but that's not likely to be relevant in this case.

[corisande]

As far as I can ascertain he enlisted as a Private 1916 Mar/Apr from service number. Enlists in Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, and later transfers to Royal Berks Regt.

He was not commissioned till Sept 1918.

I would have thought that army career would preclude a TA commission prior to WW1. But I know not enough about the way things operated with commissions to know if he could have resigned his Berks Regt in 1920 and then signed up for a TA one.

He appears to have enlisted in ADRIC the same day as he resigned his R Berks commission

[Stanley_C_Jenkins]

The reference to his service with the Artists' is almost certainly where he did his officer cadet training. The 28th Londons a.k.a. the Artist' rifles (as opposed to the 15th Londons which you stated in the earlier post) comprised of an infantry battalion serving in France and an Officer Cadet Battalion in Essex. Your man would have been commissioned from their OCB into the Berkshires.

The Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry records - that is to say the database that is held at the study centre in Woodstock - say that he "later transferred to the 15th Artists Rifles", which may indeed be a mistake - should this be The Civil Service Rifles? There is no mention of service in Mesopotamia or the 1st Bn.

[headgardener]

The Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry records - that is to say the database that is held at the study centre in Woodstock - say that he "later transferred to the 15th Artists Rifles", which may indeed be a mistake - should this be The Civil Service Rifles?

It's hard to know which part(s) of this information is/are incorrect, so I'd caution against trying to 'fill in the blanks'.

We'd have to return to the source of the information if we wanted to attempt to amend any element of it; where did the info on the database come from? Was it incorrect information that was correctly transcribed at the time that the original source was compiled? Was it a transcription error either in the original source material or in the database at the time it was compiled?

Either way, it illustrates a point; information is only as accurate as the source. The fact that it's recorded somewhere doesn't make it accurate.

I'd say that it's almost certainly a reference to his officer cadet training. The 15th Officer Cadet Battalion was run by the Artists Rifles. I think that it was styled the 15th (Artists' Rifles) O.C.B. Either way, that wouldn't have been a transfer, only an attachment for 3 or 4 months training. That's almost certainly where the confusion has arisen. So I'd suggest that he went (as a OBLI man) to the 15th O.C.B. and was then commissioned into the Berks.

He didn't serve with the Artists' Rifles; I've checked the regimental roll and there are no L. Mitchell's, or L.R. or R.L. There is an L.E.S. Mitchell, but he isn't your man.

The whole connection with special forces came about after the regiment, which had been disbanded after WW2, was reconstituted in about 1950.