Red Cross records

[jamie 1978]

Thought I would add the little success of searching for my Grand fathers war activities. By contacting the Red Cross in Geneva I have received some details of his internment in Germany. As he doesnt even appear to be on the medal index I thought that any record of him was destroyed. I now have his squadron, service number and rank as well as his locations in German hands. For the record these are.

Alexander Tyrrell RFC 20 Squadron

47292

Captured 18.5.1918 Ypres

present at Limburg camp 11.6.1918

transferred to Parchim camp 3.7.1918

Jamie Tyrrell

[Paul Nixon]

Very good Jamie, congratulations. It must have been quite a thrill to uncover all of that information. Did the photo come from the same source in Geneva?

You could perhaps post details of the people you contacted in Geneva so that others could also try this route.

Paul

[Guest 2contemptable]

An excellent piece of work Jamie!!!

Can I concur with Paul I would be grateful if you could post the details.

Cheers

James.

[JulianB]

Well Jamie, you are the lucky one. I recently received a letter from the ICRC regarding my grandfather too. After I agreed to pay the Sw Fr 80 (= approx £35) per hour - min 2 hours, I got 2 very minir pieces of info. Never mind, I have no regrets giving money to the RC. It seems as thuogh there are variable amounts of info. Yes, I had given them dates, numbers, etc etc etc

I got the address fro searching this forum !

Actually, I have made some headway by scrutinising letters, looking at eg Cox & Co book etc etc but have not yet tried the FO papers at the PRO. (He's not in WO 161, but then only 2% are).

Interestingly I have been equally unlucky with papers still held by the MoD (they only charge £25) and have had to write more than once after being fobbed off with a "blue form" for someone who was intermittenty in the army for almost 40 years ! - but still didn't get v much - and I thought what ended up in the PRO had been weeded !!!! Well, it makes research more interesting !!

JulianB

[jamie 1978]

Here is the address http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/h...es?OpenDocument

Yes they do charge 80 swiss francs an hour which is rather a lot, however when I considered that there doesn' t seem to be anything about him in British Archives it was my only option. I already had the photo which is the only picture I had of him, so without the service number squadron etc I had no real idea of where he was during the war. It has given me the chance to bring his service career to life, as I had kind of given up hope.