My Grandfather

[emmakatebush]

Hello,

Please can anyone give me some guidance or tips. I am trying to help my mother find out more information about her father - who we believe served in the army of occupation in Germany after the first world war. His name was Thomas Vincent Patrick Cullen - born in Staffordshire 1901. Later lived in Rainworth nr Mansfield. He was in Cologne in a pyschiatric unit at one point he was very badly affected by his experience and never fully recovered. She would like to know more about his experience and perhaps see a list with his name and battalion or regiment and details of their history etc. Any ideas? Best Wishes.

[charlie962]

Welcome to the Forum. Are you definite about the Patrick because there is a Griffiths that follows the details you provide above ?

 

Charlie

Edited 19 October , 2018 by charlie962

[emmakatebush]

Hello,

Thankyou so much for your reply. I think you may well be onto something there because his father was called Griffiths. (His father was apparently in the Welsh Guard). However we did not know he used his fathers name as he was absent. Can you tell us anymore?

Best Wishes.

[charlie962]

If you have Ancestry you will find a family tree for TVG Cullen here

[IPT]

Charlie's chap's birth was registered in 1900 in Stoke as Thomas Vincent G Cullen. Where does Patrick come from?

[emmakatebush]

28 minutes ago, IPT said:

Charlie's chap's birth was registered in 1900 in Stoke as Thomas Vincent G Cullen. Where does Patrick come from?

 

33 minutes ago, IPT said:

Charlie's chap's birth was registered in 1900 in Stoke as Thomas Vincent G Cullen. Where does Patrick come from?

Oops mistakenly quoting there! I do not currently have access to ancestry. But yes I am pretty sure that is my grandfather. My mum got muddled with her brother's middle name. On the death certificate it only says Thomas Vincent Cullen. He married my grandmother Dorothy Mary Agnes Cullen. We think he dropped his fathers part of the name as he sadly had no contact with him. Can you tell me of any military records I can look at that list his name and service or details of his time in hospital in Cologne or books/memoirs that remember this part of the war - the army of occupation in Germany. Thankyou.

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

FreeBMD gives a death for Thomas Vincent Cullen in the January to March quarter of 1980 in the Mansfield district.

This gives his date of birth as October 11th 1900.

[emmakatebush]

Yes that is him.

 

[charlie962]

14 hours ago, emmakatebush said:

I do not currently have access to ancestry

Try a free trial perhaps or your local library may give free access. The trees I linked for you will give you more (but not the military). Presumably relatives of yours have created these trees !

 

13 hours ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

FreeBMD gives a death for Thomas Vincent Cullen in the January to March quarter of 1980 in the Mansfield district.

This gives his date of birth as October 11th 1900. 

This is as noted in the tree link above. The Birth record is for Thomas Vincent G Cullen

 

Charlie

 

 

 

[Ray Tomlinson]

Before you get excited about the possibility of free Ancestry access at your local library, do check with them what it currently includes. Before I took out an Ancestry sub, the library edition didn’t include access to their subscribers public trees.

 

A better bet would be for you to sign up for a 14 day free trial. You will need to give them your bank/credit card details as they will take payment for a years sub after the 14 day trial expires but, as soon as you’re signed up, you can go into your account and remove the “auto-renew” feature. 

 

You can do a fair bit in 14 days and you might even get the bug!

[emmakatebush]

Hello,

 

Thankyou all for your replies. I will do the ancestry work. I also wonder if any of you know how to find out what regiment / battalion he was in and what years he served or any further details about his time in the army of occupation. How could I access military records for example? Or recommended texts? Yes relatives on both sides of the family have been doing family tree work so we have lots of birth and death certificates and i do find it very interesting.

 

Bests.

[sotonmate]

Looking at the Medal Index Cards on Ancestry there is no obvious direct ref to a soldier of this name. There are many T CULLEN and it was not always seen that all names were shown on that card. This would have given a start in terms of his number (s) and unit (s).

In view of his birth date of Oct 1900 he would not have been posted to an active war zone until he was 18 or over, so it is quite possible that he has no medal card because he had no medal entitlement, unless you know differently and know of a medal. If so the edge of the medal has the answer !

Serving in Germany, after the war as you say,would have given him an entitlement to the British War Medal if he went there before the medal ceased to be issued in 1920. Issue of the Victory Medal ceased in April 1919.

[emmakatebush]

I am not sure if he had a medal. I do know that he ended up in a psychiatric unit in Cologne. he never fully recovered after he returned to England.

 

 

[emmakatebush]

Any ideas on how to find out where my Grandad served and for how long - or where to begin looking into the time he spent in the army of occupation after WW1?

 

[charlie962]

It is going to be very difficult. My thoughts-

 

Because of his age he doesn't look to have gone overseas during the war therefore no Medals or Medal Index Card. (But see below)

 

There is no sign of a surviving Service Record for a Thomas Vincent Griffiths Cullen. Mabe one of the Thomas Cullens is him.That would mean a long slog through records.

 

Because he was too young to be eligible to vote he won't be on the Absent Voters Lists which might have given us a clue as to unit.

 

Perhaps there is something in a local paper about him going to Germany or coming back -maybe hospitalised?

Perhaps one of your relatives has a family story or bit of paper that might link him with a regiment ?

He could have lied about his age, which would make your searches even more difficult ?

 

17 hours ago, emmakatebush said:

he ended up in a psychiatric unit in Cologne

I'm not sure what research can be done using this. If he was ill as a consequence of his military service I would have expected this to be documented. But how ?.

 

What was it about his work that upset him ? Was he involved with CWGC in recovery and identification of bodies from the battlefield perhaps ?

 

There are some service records retained by the Ministry of Defence for those born before 1901 who had not been discharged until after 1920. Perhaps he could be in this lot ? Ancestry have an Index although I think some errors exist in the data they were supplied by the MoD. These are the  Cullen hits with birth date 1900. No-one has October 11th 1900.

              

 

18 hours ago, sotonmate said:

Serving in Germany, after the war as you say,would have given him an entitlement to the British War Medal if he went there before the medal ceased to be issued in 1920. Issue of the Victory Medal ceased in April 1919.

Interesting comment by Sotonmate. As I read it then if he was discharged 1920 or earlier he should at least have got the BWM. Is that so ?and thus there should be a Medal Index Card. If he was discharged after 1920 his service record should still be held by the MoD.  Was there a gap in the latter part of 1920 not covered by either ?

 

 

Charlie

 

 

Edited 21 October , 2018 by charlie962