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Remembered Today:

RFA 48 Brigade A Battalion


SueJM

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I am helping a friend research his Uncle who they know very little about except for the following: -

Lived in Kent

Royal Field Artillery

48 Brigade

Possibly A Battalion?

Gunner E Ellis 106466

Killed 6 April 1917

Buried at Warlincourt Halte

Can anyone tell me where they would have been based at the time of his death? I get so confused with the different divisions. All help gratefully received

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14th Division,

 

I am afraid that I only have their Diary to Dec 16.

 

Andy

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Thank you Max,

 

Only thing I can add is that he does not appear in the December 1915 Nominal Roll conducted on the Division Commanders orders for all units of the 14th Division.

 

Andy

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Andy - In Jan 17 they left the 14th Div to become an Army Brigade.  (I realise that is irrelevant to 1915!)  His CWGC entry is clear.

 

Max

Edited by MaxD
Brackets added)
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SueJM

 

A little more about him - medal records and his number show he joined up in September 1915 and first went overseas on 14 Dec 1915 (missed the roll call by days perhaps?).  He died of wounds in No 32 Casualty Clearing Station (a mini hospital) which was at Warlencourt at the time.  He would have been evacuated from where he was wounded a little time before along the casualty chain.  The cemetery in which he is buried is just outside the village, map here https://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2000079/warlencourt-british-cemetery/  He left his effects of £5 9s and his war gratuity of £7 to his widow Alice.  (CCS info etc from the Register of Soldiers' Effects).  There is a minor disagreement about which battery he was in 48 Brigade, the cemetery details say A Battery, the Effects register says B Battery.  His detailed service record did not survive the bombing in the second war.

 

Max

 

 

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Hi Sue,

 

Unfortunately, Ernest doesn't appear to have surviving service papers.

 

His Soldiers Died record says that he was born in Chislehurst, and enlisted in Bromley. The amount of war gratuity shown as paid in his Soldiers Effects record can be used to back calculate an estimated enlistment date of circa September 1915. That date ties back well with some near number men who do have surviving records:

 

106461 Bowles joined 07.09.195

106463 McDonald joined 06.09.1915

106466

106468 Everest joined 06.09.1915

106469 White joined 04.09.1915

 

His medal roll records show that he first arrived overseas (France/Flanders) on 14th December 1915. In the absence of other records what we don't know is what unit/s he served with overseas up to the point of his death. If he was always with 48 Brigade RFA, he would have joined them as a reinforcement, as they first arrived in theatre in May 1915.

 

His CWGC records show him as serving with 'A' Battery, 48 Brigade RFA when he died. This is slightly at odds with his Soldiers Effects record which has him as 'B' Battery, 48 Brigade RFA. That record also says that he died in the care of 32 Casualty Clearing Station, so it would seem that he was wounded and passed down the initial part of the evacuation chain. The 'History Information' on the CWGC site says that the cemetery was used by 32 CCS from April to June 1917.

 

He doesn't appear to have a Soldiers Will.

 

It looks like the good folk at British War Graves would be able to provide a good quality digital image of his grave stone, on a free of charge basis. Contact details, etc are here.

 

Good luck with your research.

 

Regards

Chris

 

Edit: Note to self. Don't take so long to compile posts. Max posted most of this an hour ago :(

 

Edited by clk
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Clk - the difference is that you took the trouble to link all the supporting info which very much enhances the bare outline.

 

Sue - more tomorrow on the locations.

 

Max

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2 hours ago, MaxD said:

Andy - In Jan 17 they left the 14th Div to become an Army Brigade.  (I realise that is irrelevant to 1915!)  His CWGC entry is clear.

 

Max

Thanks Max, that would explain why I only bothered to get the diary to Dec 16.

 

Andy

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Here's some more about Ernest Ellis.  He was one of the 70 odd Gunners in the battery which had a total of 198 (figures vary a bit) officers and men in total and about the same number of horses and mules.  When he went to France, an RFA Brigade had 4 batteries of 4 guns each, A B and C with 18 pounder guns and D with 4.5 inch Howitzers (find these both on Google).  He succumbed to his wounds on 6 April in the CCS which implies he was wounded some little time before.  The war diary, in common with almost all others, does not mention soldiers' names and, as in this case, doesn't even mention numbers of casualties.  However, by looking at the diary for March and the start of April, we can make a fairly good stab at locating where he was when he was wounded.

The diary clarifies the A Battery/B Battery discrepancy I believe.  A Battery left the brigade on 14 March to go to the 3rd Army School, perhaps to assist there in training.  This was well to the west of the operational area and being wounded there and ending up at Warlencourt, miles to the south, would not make a lot of sense.  The B C and D batteries were deployed to the south of Arras so what may have happened is that he moved from A Battery to B Battery but the change didn't catch up with his documents so the CCS records him coming from B whereas the CWGC have him belonging to A.  There could be other explanations of differing degrees of plausibility, without his personal record we shall never know!

That said, if we look at what B Battery were doing at the time we find them deployed in Beaurains immediately to the south of Arras and engaged in the last weeks of March and the first week of April in the preparatory bombardment of enemy trenches and barbed wire defences in what became known as the First Battle of the Scarpe, an opening phase of the allied offensive that became known as the Battle of Arras 1917 which actually began on 9 April.

The map and present day image on the following link (my efforts at shortening links fail every time!) shows the area.  Beaurains to the north west, top left, Arras of the top of the map above Beaurains.  The target areas are the trench lines in red running diagonally through Neuville Vitasse.

The diary records the Beaurains position of B Battery coming under shell fire on 22, 23 and 24 March.  While the diary does not say anything about casualties, I would suggest that perhaps it was during that time that Ernest was wounded and then taken via a Field Ambulance in the area to 32 CCS about 14 miles to the south.

Quite a lot of supposition there but to my mind the locations all fit.  Map/image here:

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=13&lat=50.2523&lon=2.8257&layers=101465080&right=BingHyb

 

Max

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