Second Lieutenant Percy Cargill Reid QWR

[Guest]

Percy Reid (b 1883) was educated at Wanganui College, NZ and then at Marlborough College. He went out to Canada to work, from where he returned with the CEF as a private soldier. Later he was commissioned into the London Regiment and was killed near Arras in May 1917 while serving with QWR. I have his entries from CWGC and Marlborough Register, but does anyone have access to QWR war diaries or other sources where the circumstances of his service and death might be found?

[Langdon]

Just checking that you know the following:

You can access the QWR War Diaries (Feb 1916 to Nov 1919) at TNA for £3.30..

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C7354946

Officers tend to be the only casualites named.

He has a MIC under Percy Carsill Reid - in the 62/Bn Can Inf, 464539.

Commissioned 19.12.16

Also via Ancestry he is on De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour with a lot of detail (but no photo) - "..an excellent officer... and a very gallant leader."

Mike

[Peterhastie]

Also

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=592204

[Guest]

Many thanks for the helpful information. I have downloaded the QWR War Diary but it has left me confused. Percy Reid is recorded on the CWGC website as being killed on 6 May 1917. His service details are 2/Lt, London Regt (QWR) 16 Bn, and he is buried in Tank Cemetery, Guemappe. Yet the QWR War Diary records no officer casualties on 6 May, and for several days before and after. 2/Lt Reid is not recorded as either having arrived as a reinforcement or anywhere as a casualty, although records of officer reinforcements and casualties seem to be meticulously kept in the WD. In Henriques 'War History of the QWR' he is listed in the Roll of Honour but not in the wider list of 'Officers who served overseas 1914-19'. He was only commissioned in Dec 1916 and his school magazine records that he was killed on 6 May 'only two months after going to the front'. Might this mean that, although nominally with the QWR, he was serving with another battalion in the same area on the day he was killed?