Robert Rinder`s Gt/Grandad Israel.

[Guest]

Also intriguing that there are no KRRC casualties with the prefix TR  who died outside the UK- given that most of them are 18 (with a few over 40), then flu must have got most of them.

   Mark, would the prefix TR have been dropped if the man was transferred to a more regular battalion,whether reserve or frontline??

(If so, would suggest that RR's grandfather never got through basic training)

Edited 16 August , 2018 by Guest

[ss002d6252]

Also intriguing that there are no KRRC casualties with the prefix TR  who died outside the UK- given that most of them are 18 (with a few over 40), then flu must have got most of them.

   Mark, would the prefix TR have been dropped if the man was transferred to a more regular battalion,whether reserve or frontline??

(If so, would suggest that RR's grandfather never got through basic training)

From what I have seen Mike the TR number was usually dropped on transfer to another battalion.

Craig

[PhilB]

8 hours ago, MBrockway said:

 

 

Plenty of the unnaturalized Russian Jews served in front line units - there were the various RF Jewish battalions and the Zion Mule Corps - but serving away from the Western Front in the Middle East an Gallipoli.

 

 

As presumably many Jews fought with the Germans on the Western Front, why would the British keep them away from there? Would the Germans have had a "bad attitude" towards them if captured?

[MBrockway]

49 minutes ago, PhilB said:

As presumably many Jews fought with the Germans on the Western Front, why would the British keep them away from there? Would the Germans have had a "bad attitude" towards them if captured?

 

Certainly true - several Anglo-Jews won VCs on the Western Front.

 

And certainly true that many of the Russian Jews so recently arrived fleeing state persecution in Russia did volunteer and did serve on the Western Front.

 

However views in the Russian Jewish community about the Eastern Front were complex and it was understandable that people driven from their homes by pogroms could have very ambivalent feelings about which side to support.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, ss002d6252 said:

 

From what I have seen Mike the TR number was usually dropped on transfer to another battalion.

Craig

 

      Exactly so. Craig-  I raise the point to ask IF  a man is discharged with that number and the prefix "TR", would it be indicative (to the army authorities), that he never completed basic training? I have one such man among my local list-died of something (not flu) aged 18 at the end of the war. I suspect it has something to do with pay and the counting of service towards medal entitlements. I had noticed that ,of course, the 6 figure sequences have men on sequential numbers, some with, some without . indicate there must be some army reg. that says when a man can have the TR removed. Of course, "on posting" is the obvious answer but presumably there is some bit of paperwork to tell if and when a man was considered an "efficient soldier". Just a thought.

     Robert Rinder's grandfather was discharged after a good few months in the army-  much longer than if he was just being run through a training battalion for basics and getting to acceptable levels of fitness and proficiency.. It suggests to me at least that the man had recurrent problems but that there was some hope of  getting them back in order, given his extended stint as "TR". Given his subsequent history, then the problems of his later life-I would infer-may have been apparent as a "problem" to the army authorities in 1918. The only real query with it, is why he was in a KRRC battalion, albeit home and static, rather than in a labour battalion-which presumes-possibly- both mental and physical problems.

     Of course, we are only too used to reading service files which just say "posted to". But there had to be some recognized system of gauging the proficiency of a TR man so that there was rationality ( a word not often used of the British army) in who was posted for service. Reading through my local casualties, there are a number who were called up under MSA in the earlier part of 1916, missed 1st July 1916 but then get shipped over to France when not fully trained, just to fill the line. One of them-killed with 10 RF- was in a draft where even the war diary of the battalion comments on how little service and training the men had when they arrived- rather unusual in a war diary. 

    I ask also as this system of training reserves and not letting men forward may have been a small background factor in the Maurice Debate- that men were being held back for full training-and fitness- rather than being fed in,as with the Somme.  But whether this was a wholly military decision or whether it was partly political is another matter. Consequently, the regs. for TRs and WHEN men were posted is of interest as flagging up the friction between the demands of the army commanders in France for manpower- no matter what- and the worries of the home authorities that manpower was being squandered. So the problem of how and when men were posted form TRs throws up all sorts of nuances, most of which are buried away in the Maurice stuff.

Edited 16 August , 2018 by Guest

[ss002d6252]

Quote

I had noticed that ,of course, the 6 figure sequences have men on sequential numbers, some with, some without . indicate there must be some army reg. that says when a man can have the TR removed

 

As I understand it the TR number (the whole TR/X/XXXX) format was only for the TR purposes - leave the TR to a new battalion and the number was changed to one of their sequence. I don't believe the TR number was treated any different to any other army number as far as that side of it was concerned. Where parts of a TR prefix are missing I think it's just down to the bad habit of dropping prefixes.

Quote

prefix "TR", would it be indicative (to the army authorities), that he never completed basic training.

I'm not sure on that point - I have seen men who appear to have been sent to the TR after already being in the army and they were given a TR number. I assume these men had been sent to act as trainers (or possibly as a refresher if they'd been clerks etc ?). This is more a suggestion but there may well have been some men who for whatever reason didn't progress fully through training but were retained for other purposes in the battalion, as they'd never been transferred then men would also retain the same number.
 

Craig

Edited 16 August , 2018 by ss002d6252

[Pat Atkins]

1 hour ago, PhilB said:

As presumably many Jews fought with the Germans on the Western Front, why would the British keep them away from there? Would the Germans have had a "bad attitude" towards them if captured?

 

As you say, the German Army had plenty of Jewish servicemen of course; I doubt German anti-semitism (or indeed, anti-slavism) was believed to represent a threat serious enough to cause Britain to restrict access to manpower available for the Western Front (certainly I've never come across this idea, though I'm hardly an expert). It's possible, I suppose, that 'non-British' servicemen would have been treated badly on capture, as the largely-conscript German Army displayed a marked dislike for 'mercenaries' early in the war - evidenced in its rather rough handling of British Regular Army POWs in 1914 - but I suspect that pretty soon those old views will have gone, along with other pre-War conceptions.

[stiletto_33853]

Mike,

 

The whole TR numbers game threw quite a lot of confusion into the number sequence. We have found quite a few of them that were given a New Army number at their Depot, when called up and sent to the TRB's they were issued with a new TR number. Once their training had been completed they were then given a completely new number, hence a man going through the TRB's could end up with effectively 3 numbers in a lot of cases.

 

Andy

Edited 16 August , 2018 by stiletto_33853

[MBrockway]

Certainly any documentation/AOs/ACIs covering the transition of men from TR to Service battalions would be of very great interest to myself and Andy.

 

Mark

[MBrockway]

4 hours ago, ss002d6252 said:

Where parts of a TR prefix are missing I think it's just down to the bad habit of dropping prefixes.

 

Craig

 

Craig,

100% agree - TR men appearing in KRRC records often have their service number listed without the TR prefix as e.g. 13/xxxxx, and sometimes just as plain xxxxx without even the TR 'District' - for KRRC this is usually (but not always) 13 - where their correct full SN should be TR/13/xxxxx.

 

When a newbie poster requests info on a KRRC Rifleman and gives an all numeric SN, I generally also check the TR/13, R/, C/, Y/ and A/ prefix ranges as well as the Regulars

[Guest]

4 hours ago, MBrockway said:

When a newbie poster requests info on a KRRC Rifleman and gives an all numeric SN, I generally also check the TR/13, R/, C/, Y/ and A/ prefix ranges as well as the Regulars

 

      Hooray- it all makes perfect sense Mark.  But it was a curiosity that at some point the designation "TR" might have been dropped  as the consequence of some organised and systematic official act. If  all of this stuff was -at some point- coming in to a central location-the KRRC depot, then it begs that question. And, in consequence of the variety of prefixes with KRRC, then whose records were CWGC using for listings????   I have always assumed from surviving service records of the "Burnt Documents" that the stuff was coming from a regimental depot. But this might not be so- if KRRC was reporting onward and the 6 figure numbers were the norm, then why bother retaining the TR designation for a dead man if all it did was complicate matters across an army-wide use of the 1916 renumbering. Not, of course, that important but perhaps a soupcon of understanding whether the use of TR after a man's death might elucidate his status within KRRC just a little bit more. One would have thought that CWGC would have regularised this matter in it's listings.

   I cannot see any such differentiation in the Rifle Brigade, which I ran as a check on what KRRC was doing- same extra-territorial aspects of organization-as well as a presumption (Obviously wrong) that an army clerk on one side of Winchester might be doing the same as one on the other side. Alas, No-far too logical for the army.

      As it is, I have 10 KRRC casualties on my local listing-  all of them casualties of 1917-1918 and all apparently conscripts,as far as I know. 7 have the prefix "R" covering  1, 6,7,8,13, and 21 Bns. 2 are on "A" numbers -1 and 21 - one in 1st KRRC  is a 1918 home death (not flu), while the other-just to complicate matters-is R200705 in KRRC,having previously been on an "S" prefix 6 figure number with the Rifle Brigade. (As I assumed that KRRC and RB swapped or traded drafts around Winchester, this just confuses me even more)   The last man is on a "C" prefix.

     All of the "R" men are over 30 at death- bar one (7KRRC in Mespot-he may have served before,I am not sure). This suggests to me that the "R" prefix was for the older conscripts of 1916-1917-all men over 30, Of the remaining 3, one "A" and one "C" are 19 at death-suggesting the prefix may have ben for the more youthful conscripts (possibly held back??)  Slightly perplexing-but it may help in giving a flavour as to why my locals who went into KRRC ended up with the prefixes they did and why they went to particular battalions-  Dare I ask what "R" actually means in KRRC terms.

    I notice also-which may be rather unscientific, that when I look at these men on CWGC, they seem to be in little clumps of London casualties, while above and below are little clumps of Midlands and North- which,again, suggests to me that when KRRC put in a chit for drafts, then it would take men from ALL 3  main areas-London, Midland, Manchester on either a request at the same time- or on a "round robin " basis so that the 3 areas were predated in turn.  Mark, does this make any sense to you??

 

[MBrockway]

 

      Hooray- it all makes perfect sense Mark.  But it was a curiosity that at some point the designation "TR" might have been dropped  as the consequence of some organised and systematic official act. If  all of this stuff was -at some point- coming in to a central location-the KRRC depot, then it begs that question. And, in consequence of the variety of prefixes with KRRC, then whose records were CWGC using for listings????   I have always assumed from surviving service records of the "Burnt Documents" that the stuff was coming from a regimental depot. But this might not be so- if KRRC was reporting onward and the 6 figure numbers were the norm, then why bother retaining the TR designation for a dead man if all it did was complicate matters across an army-wide use of the 1916 renumbering. Not, of course, that important but perhaps a soupcon of understanding whether the use of TR after a man's death might elucidate his status within KRRC just a little bit more. One would have thought that CWGC would have regularised this matter in it's listings.

   I cannot see any such differentiation in the Rifle Brigade, which I ran as a check on what KRRC was doing- same extra-territorial aspects of organization-as well as a presumption (Obviously wrong) that an army clerk on one side of Winchester might be doing the same as one on the other side. Alas, No-far too logical for the army.

      As it is, I have 10 KRRC casualties on my local listing-  all of them casualties of 1917-1918 and all apparently conscripts,as far as I know. 7 have the prefix "R" covering  1, 6,7,8,13, and 21 Bns. 2 are on "A" numbers -1 and 21 - one in 1st KRRC  is a 1918 home death (not flu), while the other-just to complicate matters-is R200705 in KRRC,having previously been on an "S" prefix 6 figure number with the Rifle Brigade. (As I assumed that KRRC and RB swapped or traded drafts around Winchester, this just confuses me even more)   The last man is on a "C" prefix.

     All of the "R" men are over 30 at death- bar one (7KRRC in Mespot-he may have served before,I am not sure). This suggests to me that the "R" prefix was for the older conscripts of 1916-1917-all men over 30, Of the remaining 3, one "A" and one "C" are 19 at death-suggesting the prefix may have ben for the more youthful conscripts (possibly held back??)  Slightly perplexing-but it may help in giving a flavour as to why my locals who went into KRRC ended up with the prefixes they did and why they went to particular battalions-  Dare I ask what "R" actually means in KRRC terms.

    I notice also-which may be rather unscientific, that when I look at these men on CWGC, they seem to be in little clumps of London casualties, while above and below are little clumps of Midlands and North- which,again, suggests to me that when KRRC put in a chit for drafts, then it would take men from ALL 3  main areas-London, Midland, Manchester on either a request at the same time- or on a "round robin " basis so that the 3 areas were predated in turn.  Mark, does this make any sense to you??

 

Straying off Israel Medalyer too much I fear and I'm afraid the KRRC/RB SN schema is not that simple!  It would confuse a genius!

 

Send me the names & SN's of your 10 KRRC men in a PM and I will attempt to clarify what their prefixes mean and why they got them.

 

We do not think the TR prefix numbers were managed by the Rifle Records Office, although it does seem to have been treated as a non-geographic Military District with number '13', so it is possible,  Andy and I are still researching this.

 

When a rifleman left the TR, he did not just drop the TR prefix, he was given a completely new SN.

You're barking up the wrong tree looking for a correlation between age groups and prefixes.

 

I'd be extremely surprised if all ten men are conscripts.  Explain in the PM why you think that.

 

Riflemen transferring between RB and KRRC (and also the Rifles-linked LR battalions) were re-numbered.  If they were attached temporarily they were not.

 

Don't understand how a 7/KRRC riflemen died in Mesopotamia!  That's going to be interesting!

 

I have no idea what you mean by "if KRRC was reporting onward and the 6 figure numbers were the norm" - you've lost me sorry!

 

What is the "army-wide use of the 1916 renumbering" you speak of?

 

I don't completely understand your discussion about geographic 'clumps'.  If you mean you think you are seeing geographic patterns when you look at the service numbers in sequence, that may merely be a product of the Rifle Depot allocating SNs to men who have just arrived in Winchester off the same train who obviously are going to share a degree of geography in common. 

 

No idea what you mean by the KRRC putting in chits for drafts, sorry!

 

Probably simplest for me to reply with the specifics on your ten riflemen.

 

Mark

 

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the response-Mark. yes, I have been following the example of my son's very happy mutt-who will bark at any number of wrong trees. Will PM in due course-and not stray far from Judge Rinder again. You are right- the 7 KRRC man is not Mespot.- my mistake-he is buried at Tigris Lane Cemetery,Wancourt-hence my misreading of an Excel file.    Doh!! Why couldn't KRRC do anything simply!!

[MBrockway]

 

     why bother retaining the TR designation for a dead man if all it did was complicate matters across an army-wide use of the 1916 renumbering. Not, of course, that important but perhaps a soupcon of understanding whether the use of TR after a man's death might elucidate his status within KRRC just a little bit more. One would have thought that CWGC would have regularised this matter in it's listings.

   I cannot see any such differentiation in the Rifle Brigade, which I ran as a check on what KRRC was doing- same extra-territorial aspects of organization-as well as a presumption (Obviously wrong) that an army clerk on one side of Winchester might be doing the same as one on the other side. Alas, No-far too logical for the army.

   

Quick search of the CWGC List of the Fallen for riflemen with TR service numbers gives ...

 

KRRC                       34

Rifle Brigade             36

 

All are in UK cemeteries.  Most have TR/13/xxxxx SNs (or typos for same!).

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, MBrockway said:

 

Quick search of the CWGC List of the Fallen for riflemen with TR service numbers gives ...

 

KRRC                       34

Rifle Brigade             36

 

All are in UK cemeteries.  Most have TR/13/xxxxx SNs (or typos for same!).

 

   Thanks Mark- I will leave your good self and Andy (also a good self) to get on with KRRC- Reasonably happy I have got a grip on the training battalions and their ways-though the older ages of my KRRC men with R numbers was very striking. There are only 2 I will ask about in due course-same surname and I believe them to be related.  You have a glittering future ahead of you as an army clerk in Winchester.   All the best   

[MBrockway]

A very low proportion of the KRRC R/ prefixes will have been through the Training Reserve.

 

Many of the R/ prefix KRRC riflemen will have been under 25 yrs.  Also the RB's S/ equivalents.  Most will be K1 and K2 volunteers.

 

Send me the names and SNs of the ten men you're researching and I'll explain their SNs to you and save you going down the wrong rabbit holes!

[roughdiamond]

As an aside, Robert Finder's marriage ceremony was conducted by his old University chum Benedict Cumberbatch.

 

Sam

[sotonmate]

Just  noticed this thread, not here so much now. I saw the programme and had a fleeting idea that there were medal ribbons on the chest of the soldier called Israel, seems no one else here saw this, so maybe I was hallucinating. May have been some photo developing flaw possibly. I checked him out as far as i could, no MIC but a brother did. Not the same regiment though. I was wondering whether the photo was of the right soldier.

Maybe I'll take more water with it.

[MBrockway]

3 hours ago, sotonmate said:

Just  noticed this thread, not here so much now. I saw the programme and had a fleeting idea that there were medal ribbons on the chest of the soldier called Israel, seems no one else here saw this, so maybe I was hallucinating. May have been some photo developing flaw possibly. I checked him out as far as i could, no MIC but a brother did. Not the same regiment though. I was wondering whether the photo was of the right soldier.

Maybe I'll take more water with it.

 

I've attempted a screen grab from BBC iPlayer ...

 

© 2018 BBC

 

There are some marks on the image roughly where ribbon(s) should be.

 

I have a better resolution version of the image, but unfortunately it's cropped so the bottom of the image is missing roughly in line with the top edge of the breast pockets.

 

Here anyway is a close-up from that ...

 

and with the colour inverted.

 

No sign of a medal ribbon to my eyes - I'm seeing the marks as damage to the print, but I'll admit it is not possible to be 100% certain.

 

He never left Blighty, so we would not expect medals anyway.

 

Mark

 

[sotonmate]

Mark

 

Thanks for your painstaking contribution ! I now see that the fleeting glance I got from the TV was a trick of the light !

[Bardess]

I watched and thoroughly enjoyed this programme this evening. I didn't have any idea who he was and so read this thread after. I was touched by the absolute love of his family and his reactions to the heart-rending information unfolding on the screen. A few 'gulp' moments and then it ended. I must admit that a couple of times I wanted to hand him a lip salve but, other than that, I found it most entertaining