Tracing my grandfather - Private Walter William Timms, A.S.C. Ambulance Driver M2/157002

[simond9x]

I hope it's OK to post this here.

 

I wonder if anyone can help me please? This is very much a last-ditch attempt to trace my Grandfather's whereabouts in France/Belgium during the Great War. He drove ambulances for the A.S.C.

I have already received help from two eminent historians, one about 7 years ago, the other about 2 years ago, but his trail goes cold as he leaves for France. I'm quite sure that if neither of these esteemed gentlemen could track him further then there is probably nothing left to discover. This post is just a hope that maybe someone who specialises in the A.S.C. might be able to suggest another line of enquiry. If not, it's sadly time to close the book on him.

 

What do I actually know about him?

 

His name was Walter William Timms, born 7th August 1889 near Tewkesbury. At the outbreak of war he was working as a chauffeur at Shipton Hall in Shropshire (probably living in Hungerford). At the end of 1915, he responded to the call for professional drivers and his service number of M2/157002 was confirmed when he first arrived at Number 1 Reserve Depot in Grove Park, London, on or around 24th March 1916. We believe that, after familiarisation with the vehicles, he probably crossed to France at the end of April / beginning of May 1916. There the trail goes cold. My mother and her brother said he served on the Somme and in Belgium and "saw some pretty terrible sights". That is anecdotal and unfortunately their generation has now passed away. My grandfather survived the war uninjured and still with the rank of Private.

 

I understand that huge numbers of WW1 records were destroyed during WW2, most probably my grandfather's among them. I further understand, from the two historians, that my grandfather's name didn't appear in any searches of the following:-

• Army Service Records WO363, WO364 and PIN26
• National Roll and de Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour
• Newspaper Archives
• Hospital Admissions MH106
• Gallantry and bravery awards
• Operational records
• Army Service Corps (digital) Journal

 

Pretty comprehensive! As I say, this is really just a final appeal to see if there may be any other avenue of enquiry left to me. Were A.S.C. Ambulance Drivers assigned to particular fighting units or were they assigned to a particular area, irrespective of which units were in that area at any given time? Were they assigned to specific Field Hospitals or Casualty Clearing Stations which might possibly have their own records? Was it a mixture of the above? It's frustrating that there is no equivalent to a "Regimental Museum" that I can contact (as I did for my wife's grandfather - they provided me with a wealth of information about his battalion's movements), although I have emailed the Royal Logistic Corps Museum to see if they can assist.

 

I have bought Michael Young's two excellent books on the A.S.C. but my search for my grandfather is now reduced to studying the photographs with a magnifying glass. So, I know it's a very, very long-shot but if anybody is able to suggest any other lines of enquiry that might shed light on where he served and when, I'd be eternally grateful.
 

[Acknown]

His MIC and Medal Roll entries are on-line showing that he was awarded the VM and BWM: W W Timms MIC, W W Timms Medal Roll . Sadly, they contain no further details.

Acknown

[Gardenerbill]

Unfortunately Simon, it sounds like you may have exhausted all avenues for research specific to your Grandfather, but you could get an idea of what he did (apologies if you have already done this) by looking at an Ambulance company war diary, for example 595 MT Coy (17th Motor Ambulance Convoy) formed in October 1915. Also you could  search for any Ambulance driver biographies. 

[IPT]

1 hour ago, simond9x said:

I have already received help from two eminent historians

 

We're much more eminenter than what they are.

 

I suspect that this FMP snippet is him (I know it says R Timms) - https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search/world-records/british-army-service-records?keywords="157002" "timms"

 

Could be a complete red herring, or a tiny clue.  I'm afraid I haven't got membership to find out.

[simond9x]

Thanks for the quick responses, guys. I'll follow up the FMP but I do recall a lot of close matches when I was looking myself a couple of years ago. I'll certainly try and find the Ambulance Company War Diaries which I think may be held in the National Archives in Kew. Hopefully they're digitised and can be accessed online!

[clk]

Hi simond9x,

 

Another potential source to rule out seems to be the PoW cards/registers held by the Red Cross. Does his then local/county record office have any surviving Absent Voters Lists?

 

It is very much a long shot, and would probably prove fruitless, but I did find this fragment of a record (buried in the file of another chap) on which he appears to be shown:

 

Image Source: Findmypast - WW1 service record collection - link

 

2 minutes ago, IPT said:

I suspect that this FMP snippet is him (I know it says R Timms)

 

IPT is correct. The actual record seems to have been mis-transcribed. It seems to read as a 'W' rather than an 'R'.

 

The bottom part of the page seems to alphabetically list a number of men being sent to Avonmouth for overseas service on 6th July 1916. I wonder if you searched for surviving files for the numbers/names in the section in which he appears, if you might be able to establish some underlying common factor.

 

Regards

Chris

 

 

 

[simond9x]

Oh..... that's interesting! First new bit of info for 2 years! Can I clarify please...... does the list you've attached above come from the FMP entry that IPT mentioned? If so, and if that's all that's held under that entry, it'll save me registering to see it. Do you know the 'official army name' of the list of which it forms part?

 

Great.... thanks for the help.

[clk]

Hi,

 

Yes, it is the FMP record. Though I've cropped the bottom part of the image a little bit. It's a single partial page (with the header missing) that appears for some reason in the papers of a Harold Sheridan Knowles.

 

Regards

Chris

 

[simond9x]

Excellent! Thanks a lot guys..... gives me something to go on (without raising my hopes too much).

 

[simond9x]

Sorry to be a pain but is there anything in the uncropped part of the document that confirms the date? The attachment seems to suggest that the list restarts from 'F' on 6/7/16 which may mean that the names above that (including my grandfather) were from an earlier date. Thanks

Edited 2 April , 2018 by simond9x

[IPT]

191511 Sidney H Hagger joined 4 Mob Coy ASC MT at Grove Park 20/6/1916. Unfortunately he was discharged medically unfit in August, so we can't glean much else from him.

 

 

[bingoworlddk]

M2/191480 Walter Joseph Turton has service records on Ancestry.

He was stationed at Home from 8.6.16 to 3.2.17, going to France 4.2.17.

He served with 57th Ammunition Sub Park from 7.7.16 to 12.3.18.

 

This may be a long shot, but could the upper part of the above list be dated 7.7.16 and be a list of personel transferred to 57 A.S.P. ?

 

Steen

[clk]

Hi,

 

49 minutes ago, simond9x said:

Do you know the 'official army name' of the list of which it forms part?

 

Not without seeing the entirety of the document. From my very limited knowledge, I did wonder if it is 'Part 2 orders'. I've no idea what that actually means, but I have seen lists headed that way which appear to show the movement of men from one establishment to another.

 

25 minutes ago, simond9x said:

is there anything in the uncropped part of the document that confirms the date?

 

Unfortunately not.

 

26 minutes ago, simond9x said:

The attachment seems to suggest that the list restarts from 'F' on 6/7/16 which may mean that the names above that (including my grandfather) were from an earlier date. 

 

I'm not really reading it that way. I think that the date of 6th July 1916 relates to men (starting with Andrews) who went to Avonmouth for overseas service. The dashed line above his entry/part of the page, for me, would suggest that something else happened to the group of men shown above (including Walter) in what would appear to be a separate alphabetical list. As the part of the list that Walter is shown in starts with the surname of Green, I guess that there would have an earlier page that would have been headed and dated accordingly. Thinking out aloud, what I'm wondering is if the list/s represents men that 'graduated' from Grove Park on 6th July 1916 - the one commencing Andrews being sent to Avonmouth for service overseas (possibly in the Med), and the one above being men sent to one of the Channel ports for service in France. Number sampling may well however blow my thoughts out of the water.

 

Trying to make the image easier to read, this is the best that I've managed to come up with...

 

 

Regards

Chris

[simond9x]

Firstly, let me say thanks to everyone chipping in on this - I really appreciate it, it's all nibbling away at what's been a total block for the last couple of years. 

 

bingoworlddk - thanks for that information, I'm just trying to 'process' it in terms of my grandfather. So Walter Turton was on the same list as my grandfather to be sent to "Avonmouth for Overseas" on/around 6/7/16. It seems that the former remained in the UK until 4/2/17. I understand that the army was short of drivers around end 1915 / early 1916. my grandfather was already a 'professional driver' before the war...... I wonder if he'd have been kept back or sent to France? Another piece in the jigsaw though, thanks!

 

I was just on the National Archives, trying to look at WO 95/340, the 421 Company ASC Diary, but the pages are 'pixellated' out rendering them totally unreadable - is this normal?

[simond9x]

clk - thanks for that and for your continuing interest. My thoughts (on the list being split by the dashed line) are that 'below the line', the list seems to jump from M back to F, whereas if it was read in vertical columns, it could conceivably go from M at the bottom left up to (somewhere between M and) S at the top right...... who knows?

 

I noticed all the marks on the reverse so I flipped your photo over to see if I could make sense of any of them...... sadly, I can't apart from several '16's which presumably indicate dates. I've attached it in case anyone's got better eyesight.

 

[IPT]

I disagree. They appear to clearly be two separate alphabetical lists. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if all of the men on the lists were drivers in civilian life.  Certainly Turton and Hagger were.

 

Turton spent some time in detention in December 1916 which could possibly have delayed his embarkation date.

 

 

[mandy hall]

37 minutes ago, simond9x said:

 

 

I was just on the National Archives, trying to look at WO 95/340, the 421 Company ASC Diary, but the pages are 'pixellated' out rendering them totally unreadable - is this normal?

If this is a War Diary you have paid to download, contact The NA?  I had problems with a War Diary recently,  they replied very quickly,  I think it was rescanned and sent to me again, took a couple of weeks to arrive.

 

Mandy

[simond9x]

18 minutes ago, IPT said:

I disagree. They appear to clearly be two separate alphabetical lists. 

 

 

Thanks. Certainly not disagreeing, just wonder what makes you think that it's 'clearly'. Tomorrow, I'll register with some of these sites so that I can do more detailed research on the men on this list.

[simond9x]

2 minutes ago, mandy hall said:

If this is a War Diary you have paid to download, contact The NA?  I had problems with a War Diary recently,  they replied very quickly,  I think it was rescanned and sent to me again, took a couple of weeks to arrive.

 

Mandy

 

Hi Mandy - thanks for your reply. No, I haven't paid to download. I registered and was just trying to view it but, as I say, it was totally unreadable. I wouldn't pay unless I knew it was what I was looking for. I'll ring them in the morning - maybe I'm doing something wrong although I didn't see anything to tell me I couldn't view it.

[simond9x]

Ha ha! Catch 22 situation. They explained that you can only read the document after you've paid and downloaded it. I asked what the purpose of the online viewer was...... it's to help you decide which document(s) you want to download. But.........?

[clk]

Hi,

 

12 hours ago, simond9x said:

I'll register with some of these sites so that I can do more detailed research on the men on this list.

 

if you haven't already, Google Find My Past and you should be able to get a free trial. My tip would be that from their search page here you only enter the surname, and the soldier number from the list, but drop the first numeral and replace it with a *. Doing that with for example 181007 Green (i.e. using *81007), picks up his records both where he is recorded as M2/181007, and as just 181007.

 

Regards

Chris

 

 

[simond9x]

Thanks clk. I did as you suggested, got myself a 1 month's membership (otherwise it won't let you see the actual records) and have spent a few hours searching all the men in the upper part of the list. I was lucky that some of them have their full service records but what it shows that they were dispersed at different times to different companies...... I haven't found any commonality yet, although I will complete the bottom part of the list later on. The search goes on........ well, for now at least.

[Colin W Taylor]

Ladies and Gents,

 

The list might be for a formed company going overseas around this time; they were often split between ports.  The vehicles would often be sent to Avonmouth with a skeleton crew of drivers under an officer and travel in the vessel. The large proportion of the manpower would  travel as passengers via Folkestone or somewhere similar.  They would likely arrive in different ports and marry-up after a few days before moving to their formation or base area.  

Unlikely given the variations in company details but the latter list might have been for replacement troops also taking replacement vehicles over to France.

 

Might the list be from unit orders denoting which members of that company are going with either party.  

 

Tracing more of the men might give an idea.

 

Regards

 

Colin

Edited 3 April , 2018 by Colin W Taylor

[Colin W Taylor]

W Kelsey from the second list actually arrived in France on 14 August 1916 and went to the Base MT Depot in Rouen - 15 August 1916 to 317 Company and then to Fourth Army Troops Supply Column.  The move is reflected in the 317 Coy diary as a transfer of 11 3 Ton Lorries, a car and an ambulance.  Kelsey was presumably one of the drivers.  Having arrived he was then posted to 654 MT Coy on 25 August.

 

Therefore - the personnel on the second half of the list might have been intended to travel on that date but instead traveled on a different date and to a different location; the list may be a superseded draft (and hence scrap paper) or the move may have been delayed.

 

Therefore Timms might not have traveled around this date.

 

 Regards

 

C

 

 

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

I'm working through the top list.

I've got down to Hodgkinson.W.  192203. They're all M2 prefixes so far, i.e all were driving before joining up.

 

Hodgkinson attested 11/12/1915. Went to France on from Southampton 19/1/17 (arr.21/1/17 Rouen) Seems to have been initially with 733 Coy (MT), but later with 244 SBAC. No evidence of ambulance yet.

5th Div Transport Coy and 594 also get a mention.

Seems to have been allocated to MT on 26/6/1916.(arr. Grove Park 28/6/16)

 

Hay.R. M2/192228  (Previous service?) ASC MT Grove Park 29/6/16  No overseas service (But a barely legible reference  to Bulford- possibly depot coy. and RAMC- possibly an examination- 1917)

 

Hunt, A. M2/192439 Attested 30/6/16. Yet said to join Grove Park on 29/6/16??   Embarked 20/9/16 (arr Salonica 2/10/16). Lots of different MT Coys

 

So- a common thread is arriving in Grove Park around 28/29th June 1916.

Could the top half be a list of arrivals, and the bottom half a list of departures?

 

Edited 3 April , 2018 by Dai Bach y Sowldiwr