CWGC confirms that John Kipling is buried in the correct grave

[trajan]

2 minutes ago, Andrew Upton said:

 

My understanding was the cloth titles relates to a different (earlier?) period. Certainly I can find various WW1 dated photos that show no cloth titles, and the brass shoulder insignia is just about visible,

 

I was wondering about this matter myself. One would have expected all those items found with a body to have been retrieved, and so where are the metal insignia that should be with what most now believe to be 'Jack'?? Or others, for that matter... But there again, the GRU were hardly trained archaeologists... And one just to has to look at the various body parts (even partial skulls) and equipment that were left in the original graves of various of Custer's 7th cavalrymen after these were exhumed for re-burial in a mass grave in 1881, five years after the battle, to see what might be left when removing relatively 'fresh' bodies for re-burial elsewhere.

[squirrel]

Just attempting, cackhandedly perhaps,  to add that while the uniform distinctions of the Irish Guards Officers at the time are well documented, there is sufficient doubt as to those worn by the Officers of the London Irish Rifles to muddy the waters regarding how an IG Officers or LIR Officers rank insignia could be identified and possibly confused with each other or indeed with an IG OR's shoulder title.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Andrew Upton said:

 

 

 

Any chance of a close up of the Officer? Head and shoulders

 

 

[squirrel]

Point taken Andrew, but a couple of those photos are late war - one is 1918.

 

[Andrew Upton]

10 minutes ago, trajan said:

 

I was wondering about this matter myself. One would have expected all those items found with a body to have been retrieved, and so where are the metal insignia that should be with what most now believe to be 'Jack'?? Or others, for that matter... But there again, the GRU were hardly trained archaeologists... And one just to has to look at the various body parts (even partial skulls) and equipment that were left in the original graves of various of Custer's 7th cavalrymen after these were exhumed for re-burial in a mass grave in 1881, five years after the battle, to see what might be left when removing relatively 'fresh' bodies for re-burial elsewhere.

 

Also worth noting that both the Corporal and Private in the detail of the last picture can be seen to be wearing Irish Guards regimental buttons on SD, with the Private clearly wearing the brass IG shoulder insignia under the Irish Guards badge. Bearing in mind this is the Irish Guards MG section of 1914, there is plenty of scope for such insignia to have been present on a body in 1915 that would have survived being buried several years.

Edited 1 September , 2016 by Andrew Upton

[Andrew Upton]

10 minutes ago, QGE said:

 

Any chance of a close up of the Officer? Head and shoulders

 

 

 

Not my picture I'm afraid, source is:

 

https://artblart.com/tag/christina-bloom-soldiers-from-the-household-battalion-leaving-for-the-front/

 

Officer is apparently Captain Greer, KIA 1917.

 

8 minutes ago, squirrel said:

Point taken Andrew, but a couple of those photos are late war - one is 1918.

 

 

And one is 1914. Same insignia throughout, and not a sniff of a cloth title in any.

Edited 1 September , 2016 by Andrew Upton

[Guest]

300 posts ago I highlighted the grisly tale of exhumation only a few months after bodies had been buried. It is worth re-posting here given we are speculating about possible mis-identification of metal insignia. If the condistions were sufficiently corrosive, the metal parts may well have been lumps of oxidised metal with few distinguishing features. 

 

Exhumations. For anyone wanting to better understand the grisly details of exhuming hastily buried bodies, there is a very detailed example in Fifteen Rounds a Minute: The Grenadier Guards at War 1914 by Michael Craster. Lord Killanin sets off to find his dead brothers' body - Lt Col George Morris Irish Guards - in Villers Cotterets. Lt Col Morris fell in early September 1914 and by November it was back the British/French hands. With the help of some locally hired labour exhumed 98 bodies. Just under half could not be identified even after less than three months. The story is nor for the faint-hearted but is worth reading in order to understand just how rapidly bodies, equipment and clothing decay. The graves contained the remains of Officers and men from a number of Guards regiments and many could not be identified. MG An abridged extract of Killanin's account reproduced here under UK copyright fair dealing clause for non-commercial research purposes;

 

My dear deVesci, In response to your request that I should send you an account in writing of what was done in the neighbourhood of Villers Cotterets in France in our search last week for the remains of ‘Missing’ Officers who, it was thought, had fallen in an engagement there on 1st September, 1914, I send you the following record of my experiences;......

 

......Villers Cotterets in the early afternoon to commence our search. About two and a half miles from Villiers Cotterets on the right hand side of the road leading to Vivières and about thirty yards in from the road and in the midst in all directions of a forest, we came to the grave which we had heard of and wished to examine. It had a cross over it and some evergreen wreaths on it, and on the cross there was an inscription in French to the effect that there were 20 English buried there. But this information was evidently taken from purple pencil writing in German on a tree hard by. It was rather illegible, and it was impossible to see whether the figures as to the number buried there were 20 or 200. It turned out that neither number was correct. The grave, or more truly pit, was about 25 feet long and 12 feet wide, and before dusk that evening more than 20 corpses had been disinterred by the six men working for us. And as it was manifest that many more corpses were there, we decided to greatly increase the size of the grave so as to have room to lay the bodies out. In the original grave the bodies were huddled and entangled just as thrown in anyhow, one after the other. The next day the work of extricating corpses from the pit was continued, and, although over sixty bodies were disinterred and examined, no officer was found among them, but a number of discs were removed from soldiers’ bodies.

 

The following morning Mr Briggs and I returned to the grave, and when nearly 80 bodies had been exhumed, the remains of Lt. Geoffrey Lambton of the Coldstream Guards were found. From various signs– the open jacket– collar etc.,– it was at once evident that the clothing was that of an officer, and, on lifting the body out of the pit and placing it on the surface of the ground, the disc of G. Lambton, Coldstream Guards, was found on the neck. Soon after the remains of Captain Tisdall of the Irish Guards were discovered and his disc found on him.

 

The next officer whose remains were come upon had no disc on and his long riding boots were gone, but it was clear from the buttons and clothes that it was the body of an Irish Guards officer. As by that time my brother was the only Irish Guards officer unaccounted for after the engagement near Villers Cotterets, and, from the general shape of the figure, I could see that these remains must be his, and any possible uncertainty was removed by finding on one of the wrists and hidden by the sleeve his small gold watch with his name on it. His remains were then placed alongside of those of Lambton and Tisdall. Very soon afterwards, the remains of another officer were found. The buttons showed that it was the body of a Grenadier, but no disc could be found on the body, but we were of opinion, from the description of George Cecil’s figure supplied to us and especially from the size of the boots, that it was his body and this was confirmed by finding on the front of the vest the initials ‘G.E.C.’ which we cut off. As a memento for his mother we took three buttons off his uniform. His remains were placed beside those of the other officers.

 

We then disinterred the few remaining bodies at the bottom of the pit and ascertained that the total number of bodies– all British– buried there was 98 (4 officers and 94 men): and, since we had examined each corpse for discs or other evidence of identity, we had at the end 24 discs of Grenadier soldiers, 17 of Irish Guards, 8 of Coldstreams and 1 belonging to Mark Darking of the East Lancashire Regiment [part of 11 Brigade]. A few books were also taken off soldiers’ corpses and the names and numbers, where decipherable, recorded. The others bodies we were unable to identify : and in no case was it possible to identify a body by features– hair, teeth, as owing to the length of time (two and a half months) since burial and to the manner in which these dead had been treated, the faces were quite unrecognisable, often smashed, and were all thickly coated with clay and blood.

 

In the afternoon the bodies of the 94 soldiers were laid out in the enlarged grave, and, since many of them were Roman Catholics, M. Le Doyen Grain-blot, the Roman Catholic Dean of Villers Cotterets came out with Mr Briggs and myself at our request and said prayers for the dead by the graveside of the soldiers and over my brother’s remains, and Mr Briggs also said prayers for the dead by the soldiers’ grave: and the bodies of the 94 soldiers were then covered with earth. The bodies of the four officers, lying beside one another on the surface close by, were covered with leaves for the night, and we returned to Villers Cotterets, after motoring hurriedly round by Puiseux and Vivières in order to see the British graves there and especially Hubert Crichton’s.

 

..... On my return to London, I gave lists of the Guardsmen whose discs or books had been found on their bodies, at the Headquarters of the Grenadiers, Coldstream, and Irish Guards in Wellington Barracks, and the Colonel of the Coldstream kept the 8 discs of the Coldstream soldiers. The other soldiers’ discs and Captain Tisdall’s I left at the War Office. The three buttons of Cecil’s uniform and the initials off his vest and also Lambton’s disc I handed to Lord Robert Cecil, and I gave my brother’s watch to his widow. A button taken off Tisdall’s uniform I gave to you. Irreparable as is the loss suffered by the death of these officers and soldiers and awful as the work of exhumation was, it is to me an abiding consolation –which I hope it will also be to the other relatives and to the friends of these officers and men– to know that their remains were rescued from an utterly unknown grave and a most indecorous burial, and have been laid to rest under the circumstances described, when everything possible was done to show respect and reverence and affection and honour to their glorious and loved memories. Believe me, Yours very sincerely, Killanin.

 

First published in Fifteen Rounds a Minute: The Grenadiers at War, August to December 1914, by Craster, Michael.

Edited 1 September , 2016 by Guest

[CdrSAN]

I suggest that there is only one question to be answered to solve the problem: what was the design of the pips found with the body? If they bore the shamrock, then it was an IG officer. If they were the standard army pips, then it was not a member of any Guards regiment. The particulars of OR's uniforms are irrelevant.

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, CdrSAN said:

I suggest that there is only one question to be answered to solve the problem: what was the design of the pips found with the body? If they bore the shamrock, then it was an IG officer. If they were the standard army pips, then it was not a member of any Guards regiment. The particulars of OR's uniforms are irrelevant.

 

Yes, this has been understood for a very long time. however that level of information was not recorded. The physical evidence we are seeking is lost, probably forever. The GRU reports simply states that it was the body of a Lieutenant, Irish Guards. No supporting reasons were recorded. No record of the insignia, no photos, no bagged evidence. A single line on a piece of paper is all we have to go by. It is the source of the great controversy as no Lieutenants Irish Guards are missing. Only 2nd Lieutenants. Given exhumation and DNA testing is a non starter, there are four scenarios. Either;

 

1. We believe the GRU report was correct and manufacture a story to fit the 'evidence' with imaginary promotions in the field, pay numbers that dont add up, etc and incidentally discard a mountain of counter-evidence. 

2. We assume the GRU made a mistake and hypothesise about alternatives. These include the possibility that:

    a. the Body was an Irish Guards Officer and the rank was mis-recorded. This would leave two possible candidates.

    b. the body was an Officer of another regiment and the 'Irish Guards' identification was a mistake by the GRU

3. Some other explanation. 

 

 

The CWGC and Parker/Legg are ardent believers in scenario 1.

 

Personally I believe scenario 1 is a non starter and scenario 2a is more likely than scenario 2b. 

 

Martin G

 

 

 

[Peter Woodger]

It was perhaps wrong of me to assume that the research done by the records officer of the CWGC was not based on sound research so I have looked at the report he submitted which was taken as proof that the headstone should be changed.

His report is produced in full on his website so we can examine in full the research done on the rank of Kipling. This important point is well worth reporting word for word.

“Lieutenant J Kipling was promoted Lieutenant on 7 June 1915”

If a member of my staff had briefed me in that way on such an important point he could expect a very difficult appraisal review at the time of his next annual confidential report. Knowing the evidence CWGC need to make the smallest change it is very disappointing that they still stand by the change made on such flimsy research.

Peter Woodger

[Andrew Upton]

3 hours ago, CdrSAN said:

I suggest that there is only one question to be answered to solve the problem: what was the design of the pips found with the body? If they bore the shamrock, then it was an IG officer. If they were the standard army pips, then it was not a member of any Guards regiment. The particulars of OR's uniforms are irrelevant.

 

As Martin G illustrates above - hardly irrelevant. As has been, repeatedly, stated - the written conclusion of the GRU is all that survives, and the balance of evidence points to that being in error to some greater or lesser degree. Irish Guards OR's shoulder insignia of the period is demonstrably very similar to that used by junior officers of the same regiment in the same period, and it is not impossible it could have been a source of some error. However, the only way we can ever be certain now would be an exhumation - and that will never happen.

[Guest]

The Guards Div History indicates that Guards Officers did not start dressing as ORs until 1917. This is consistent with a Grenadier Guards report of mid 1917 stating that Officers would wear OR's uniform for the first time.(see below)

 

I think we can eliminate the possibility of any Irish Guards Officer wearing OR's uniform into battle in Sep 1915. 

 

Martin G

 

 

Edited 1 September , 2016 by Guest

[Andrew Upton]

8 minutes ago, QGE said:

The Guards Div History indicates that Guards Officers did not start dressing as ORs until 1917. This is consistent with a Guards Div order of 1917 stating that Officers would wear OR's uniform for the first time.

 

I think we can eliminate the possibility of any Irish Guards Officer wearing OR's uniform into battle in Sep 1915. 

 

Martin G

 

And? The scenario I see as possible is an Irish Guards OR in OR's kit perhaps being mistaken for an officer based on the fact his surviving shoulder titles (and possibly regimental buttons) looking like elements of officers rank and dress.

 

Also, 100 years on we are in a better position to understand the subtleties and changing nature of regimental dress throughout the war. Some regiments had (in theory) enforced the use of officers wearing OR's kit from as early as late 1914. Would the GRU exhuming the body have been aware that the Irish Guards had only done this at a much later date? Unlikely. What they saw and how they interpreted it might have been at odds with the facts a competent militaria collector today could have presented. Without the evidence to hand who can say for certain?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Andrew Upton said:

 

And? The scenario I see as possible is an Irish Guards OR in OR's kit perhaps being mistaken for an officer based on the fact his surviving shoulder titles (and possibly regimental buttons) looking like elements of officers rank and dress.

 

Also, 100 years on we are in a better position to understand the subtleties and changing nature of regimental dress throughout the war. Some regiments had (in theory) enforced the use of officers wearing OR's kit from as early as late 1914. Would the GRU exhuming the body have been aware that the Irish Guards had only done this at a much later date? Unlikely. What they saw and how they interpreted it might have been at odds with the facts a competent militaria collector today could have presented. Without the evidence to hand who can say for certain?

 

I would entirely agree that this is a remote possibility....however Officers buttons were in fours and IG insignia, and ORs were GS and in singles (regimental buttons for ORs were still some time away I believe). One has to convince the CWGC which insists that the GRU was unlikely to have made a mistake identifying units as they were experienced in this. Personally I don't agree with the CWGC's argument however like it or not the CWGC is the sole arbiter. All parties seem to be at least agreed the GRU made a mistake with the grid ref which at least proves they can make a mistake.The CWGC has painted itself into a corner. Twice. There is no get out, which is why they so readily accept the Parker/Legg 'discoveries' which simply tell the CWGC what they want to hear. The idea that CWGC is going to make a U-turn based on informed speculation thinking is quite remote in my opinion. 

 

My focus has been to help dismantle part of the current theory in a deliberate and methodical way that leaves little room for manoeuvre. If faced with compelling counter-evidence, the CWGC just might come down from its ivory tower and leave it as an open case. If we ever get to this stage I think the CWGC will be ultra cautious about accepting new theories. How one starts to rebuilt an alternative case will require concrete proof rather than educated or informed speculation. 

 

Martin G

Edited 1 September , 2016 by Guest

[Andrew Upton]

5 hours ago, QGE said:

 

I would entirely agree that this is a remote possibility....however Officers buttons were in fours and IG insignia, and ORs were GS and in singles (regimental buttons for ORs were still some time away I believe)...

 

Look back at my post in 526 - at least one NCO and one Private soldier of the MG section in 1914 are clearly shown wearing IG regimental buttons. Foot Guards with regimental buttons was the standard at the outbreak of war, ie:

 

 

"Priced Vocabulary of Clothing and Necessaries--1909 and 1915 Part III.

IV rates for completing Garments

Regular Forces

Sewing on Buttons (regimental)--

Service Dress----Jacket and Great Coat--Rifle Regiments, Foot Guards and Household Cavalry--Includes removal of non Regimental buttons (i.e. GS or Royal Arms buttons) for each garment Military Labor 3d or civilian 4 1/2d (1915 prices)"

 

And again - buttons in fours for officers - we know that... but did the GRU doing the exhumation know that? Again, chances are they did not know the finer points of regimental dress specific to the Irish Guards. As you have just ably demonstrated, if such buttons were found they may well have assumed that because most regiments did broadly fall into the regimental buttons for officers/some NCO's and GS buttons for OR's that the mere presence of some IG regimental buttons meant he was most likely an officer or NCO in that regiment. Throw in what appears to be a rank star on whatever remains of a shoulder strap over the letters IG and the Irish Guards officer identity is wrongly cemented in place.

 

Without being able to see any of the evidence the original GRU had to hand it's all pure speculation, but to try and dismiss it as only being a "remote" possibility seems unfair to me as it is just as provable as any other explanation being offered so far on the same evidence. If the GRU made a mistake, why not a big one as much a small one?

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Andrew Upton said:

Without being able to see any of the evidence the original GRU had to hand it's all pure speculation, but to try and dismiss it as only being a "remote" possibility seems unfair to me as it is just as provable as any other explanation being offered so far on the same evidence. If the GRU made a mistake, why not a big one as much a small one?

 

Andrew.. I am not dismissing it. It is an interesting theory. I use 'remote' in the sense that I think it is a significantly less likely explanation than a simple transcription error of Lt for 2 Lt. Among the tens of thousands of recovered bodies and the multiple transcriptions of data on each, there must have been some transcription errors. We are talking here about the omission of a single digit on a single transcription. Likely in my view. 

 

Regardless of what I think, it is the CWGC which is the arbiter and it seems to be adamant that the GRUs were well versed in identification of uniforms. Put another way, it would be odd to have teams of men attempting to identify bodies (and uniforms) if they didn't have some basic understanding. If the CWGC conceded this point it would open up a rather large can of worms. I think they will stick their heels in on this point. We shall see. 

 

With regards to the Irish Guards OR's Regimental Buttons, I stand corrected. Thank you for the clarification. 

 

I am not sure if this speculation advances the case. As mentioned before I am more focused on dismantling the CWGC's speculative assumptions they make with regards to promotion protocol. It is critical to their argument. If one can demonstrate beyond doubt that Guards did not put up substantive rank ahead of the London Gazette, the whole argument about 'Lieutenant' Kipling collapses. With well over 500 data points for promotion of Guards Officers in 1915 cross referenced to the London Gazette and the diaries and nominal rolls, I think this part is watertight. This is further reinforced by that fact that a dozen Guards Officers were promoted to Temp Lt after they were allegedly promoted to substantive Lt (including some from Kipling's cohort). At risk of stating the obvious, an officer who was already a Lt would not need to be promoted to Temp Lt. This is clearly impossible and completely undermines the CWGC's ill-informed views. It is worth remembering the CWGC does not have a single shred of evidence that Kipling was wearing the rank of Lieutenant. 

 

With regards to trying to establish who it is, I will leave that to others as it is well beyond my capabilities. MG

 

[Muerrisch]

For those joining the fray late, or those rejoining after a furlough due to information exhaustion:

 

please note that my article [which is essentially MG's scenario 2a] is in the hands of the Editor of Stand To!, and also in the hands [and acknowledged] of CWGC to enable them to make some reply if they wish.

 

The breiefest summary would be that the Stand To!  Parker & Legg article is fatally or badly flawed on each of the six thrusts of its argument,

 

We shall see.

[TwoEssGee]

Surely if there was any dubiety in the identification the GRU would simply mark the remains as Unknown British Officer or Soldier. There must have been something specific found that allowed them to be confident in their identification of a particular regiment.

 

I'm not a uniform expert, but as a former Guardsman I'm confident in saying that I think it very unlikely that a Irish Guards shoulder title could be mistaken for an officers pip. Shoulder titles were mounted on brass plates, as shown earlier in the thread. Officers pips were not mounted on plates, and officers did not have the regimental letters, in this case IG, on their shoulder straps. Irish Guards officers pips are quite distinctive and quite different to shoulder titles of the OR's, which are really just a smaller version of their cap star above the letters IG.

Guards officers were not routinely wearing OR's jackets at this time, as shown in the earlier mention of the Grenadiers, and a similar reference is made in the Scots Guards history stating that this was not done until late 1917. It's fair to assume that this was common throughout the Guards Division.

 

The men of the GRU were probably quite skilled at uniform and insignia identification, after all, it was their grisly day to day task. Although mistakes were bound to have happened, I think it does them a disservice to assume that they wrongly identified a regiment or could not tell the difference between an officer and an OR, when the easy option would have been to mark the remains as U.B.S.

 

The mistake or inaccurate recording of rank is easier to understand if you consider the practicalities of how it might have come about. It's unlikely that the OIC of the GRU would have been "hands on" and he would presumably be recording the results of his men's work. Could it be that he simply misheard or mis-recorded information (in effect, a single digit) that was passed to him verbally? This is of course absolute speculation. The fact is, we will never know for certain.

 

 

[CdrSAN]

I agree with TwoEssGee that the GRU men would have been adept at distinguishing officers from ORs. As the son of a subaltern who survived Loos I can confirm that virtually every item of his uniform would have differed from those of an OR in the same battalion. Apart from differences in design, virtually every bit of kit was purchased privately, sometimes even revolvers. In any case, the pips would provide the proof, if they were available.

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, TwoEssGee said:

Guards officers were not routinely wearing OR's jackets at this time, as shown in the earlier mention of the Grenadiers, and a similar reference is made in the Scots Guards history stating that this was not done until late 1917. It's fair to assume that this was common throughout the Guards Division.

 

 

.... And is substantiated in the Operational Orders of all three Guards Brigade war diaries in 1917 when they started to wear ORs uniforms stating that all would dressed as per a particular SS document. In each case all is underlined in the original for emphasis.

 

By contrast none of the thirteen Battalion, three Brigade or Divisonal orders make any mention of Officers dress in 1915. Ditto the very detailed Divisional Routine Orders. Martin G

[Muerrisch]

Bear in mind good Forumites that the only evidence before our eyes in 2016 [and in reality since c. 1920] is a typescript piece of paper without the officer i/c GRU signature, and that the original record would certainly have been manuscript, written on a cold, windy and damp day.

 

The opportunities for one slight error [a single figure] reaching down through the years to us are many.

 

So many as to make the headstone bearing John Kiplings name speculative.

[Andrew Upton]

5 hours ago, TwoEssGee said:

...I'm not a uniform expert, but as a former Guardsman I'm confident in saying that I think it very unlikely that a Irish Guards shoulder title could be mistaken for an officers pip...

 

The men of the GRU were probably quite skilled at uniform and insignia identification, after all, it was their grisly day to day task. Although mistakes were bound to have happened, I think it does them a disservice to assume that they wrongly identified a regiment or could not tell the difference between an officer and an OR, when the easy option would have been to mark the remains as U.B.S....

 

You've essentially just proved my earlier point though - "as a former Guardsman" - you know the subtleties and differences relating to your own regiment. Unless there was a Guardsman present as part of the GRU on the day you cannot take for granted that same level of expertise was present.

 

Also, men of the GRU were, for the most part, simply ordinary soldiers. Even then, it seems to have been a role with a high turn over specifically due to the unpleasant nature of the task. High turn over of personnel is exactly the sort of thing that leads to lower levels of overall skill, as experience is lost when the person moves on, rather than being retained.

 

Where have I "assumed" they were in error? It is simply a practical alternative possibility which can neither be proved or disproved on the same evidence that is available to everyone, yet some seem keen to dismiss outright. One only needs to look at the John Condon argument to see how the very simple mistake made nearly 100 years ago (interpreting the stamped marking RIR on the piece of boot recovered with the body as Royal Irish Regiment rather than the correct Royal Irish Rifles) condemns one man to lie under a headstone with the wrong name:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Condon_(British_Army_soldier

 

The idea the GRU could get a regiment wrong is not conjecture - it is hard fact, and in the John Condon case another clear indicator of my point that while they might have had a broad knowledge of various regimental practice, when it came to the finer details they could and did sometimes make errors of interpretation. There is another good example being discussed elsewhere on the forum at present that centres on the fact that the Royal Horse Guards did some rather unusual things with rank compared to ordinary regiments which may have lead to the rank having been wrongly recorded on the grave for 100 years:

 

 

5 hours ago, CdrSAN said:

I agree with TwoEssGee that the GRU men would have been adept at distinguishing officers from ORs. As the son of a subaltern who survived Loos I can confirm that virtually every item of his uniform would have differed from those of an OR in the same battalion. Apart from differences in design, virtually every bit of kit was purchased privately, sometimes even revolvers. In any case, the pips would provide the proof, if they were available.

 

The GRU were working on a body that had been buried for several years. Depending on the level of preservation, clothing that identified him immediately as an officer (shirt, tie, etc) might have still been present. But in a worse case scenario they might have been presented with little more than a pile of bones and some metal insignia, the rest having rotted away. And that insignia would have included things like the regimental buttons (common to both OR's and officers), shoulder rank (officers only) and shoulder insignia (OR's only, but visually very similar to officers rank). Automatically presuming that the men working on exhumations were somehow less fallible than anyone else when they can be shown to make mistakes just like everyone else seems illogical to me.

[Terry_Reeves]

See "Clearing the dead" by Peter R Hodgkinson, available on line. The men involved in it had no special knowledge.

 

TR

 

 

 

 

[TwoEssGee]

31 minutes ago, Andrew Upton said:

It is simply a practical alternative possibility which can neither be proved or disproved on the same evidence that is available to everyone, yet some seem keen to dismiss outright. 

 

 

 

You are absolutely right Andrew, none of us can prove or disprove what happened, and I accept your point that not all the men serving in the GRU would have knowledge of the uniforms and insignia of all regiments. But surely if they mistook the Irish Guards OR's shoulder title for a pip, they would have recorded him as Second Lieutenant?

[Andrew Upton]

57 minutes ago, TwoEssGee said:

You are absolutely right Andrew, none of us can prove or disprove what happened, and I accept your point that not all the men serving in the GRU would have knowledge of the uniforms and insignia of all regiments. But surely if they mistook the Irish Guards OR's shoulder title for a pip, they would have recorded him as Second Lieutenant?

 

Given the amount of information already supplied in this very thread that would support the argument that John Kipling himself was most likely not wearing the rank of Lieutenant but only 2nd Lieutenant at the time of his death, yet the CWGC are still happy to put his name to that grave... one error compounded by another perhaps.

 

If we accept it IS Kipling in the grave whoever recorded the details almost certainly made one (small) mistake in that very respect. If we even begin to entertain the possibility it is not Kipling buried there you have to ask yourself - was it just the one small mistake they made? A series of small mistakes perhaps? Or worse? The cumulative effect of either of the latter two options could be unintentionally misleading for later generations.