KOYLI and RIF

[Guest]

Arthur Naylor of the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, (KOYLI) was transferred to the Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers after the battle of the Somme.

when the war ended the RIF returned to Co Fermanagh and those who had homes there were allowed to go home.

a number of soldiers who had been transferred to the RIF were billeted at a large house in Florencecourt awaiting recruiting of replacements before they were allowed to return to their homes. While in that house a number of them wrote or carved their names on the doors of that house.

I was born in that house and in 1959 I worked at Leeds City Station and used to speak to a man called Arthur who worked at Huddersfield Station. he asked me to try and get a cap badge and a button of the RIF when I came halo me on Holiday. 

The only name from the doors I remembered was Arthur Naylor so I asked if that was him and he said he was.

Two weeks later I rang Huddersfield but the man I spoke to said Arthur had died a few days earlier.

It took me 20 years to get his Numbers and the Museum in Enniskillen had no information about either him or any of the other men who had been billeted at that house in Florencecourt awaiting the issue of their own Reg uniform.

if anyone has a record or information on any of those men I'd appreciate being contacted as they survived WW1 but are forgotten past members of RIF and I'd like to put the records straight

VMAW.