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Remembered Today:

Medical Evacuation, 11th Royal Scots July 14, 1916


PJS

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I am hoping to trace the likely medical evacuation chain for my Gt Uncle, Pte. Edwin Slater (22754) of the 11th Royal Scots. There is no surviving Service Record but he was listed on the Aug 24, 1916 Daily Casualty List (in The Scotsman) and by researching the other men on the list from the 11th Royal Scots, my conclusion is that he was most likely wounded on July 14, 1916 at Longueval.

 

I have found 3 representative Service Records, posted below, but they all show different routes. 
Robert Hughes (15160):
20 General Hospital, Camiers                    7/15/1916
To England                                                 7/18/1916
2nd Western Gen Hospital, Manchester    7/19/1916

 

Arthur Watts (8625):
Wounded in Action                                      7/14/1916
Admitted 16 CC Post                                  7/14/1916
Admitted 22 General Hospital, Camiers     7/15/1916
Trans to Hospital Ship                                7/21/1916
To the UK, HS NEWHAVEN                       7/21/1916
Admitted Eastern Gen Hosp, Cambridge   7/21/1916

 

William Dobbin (13057):
96 Field Ambulance, Field                      7/14/1916
11 General Hospital, Rouen                   7/15/1916
To England                                              7/17/1916
Whiston Institute Hospital, N Prescot     7/19/1916


Does anyone have any suggestions of any other potential evacuation routes or where I might go from here?

 

Thank You

Peter

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Presumably not all the RScots men on the list that day were 11th Bn but you have identified 3.

 

Have you checked the Hospital Admissions Records (FindmyPast or ForcesWarRecords) for all the men on the list that day. It may show a pattern if you are lucky to get any hits.

 

Problem must be compounded by:

Where wre the different companies that day ?

Was there much movement forward or backward that day by the Bn?

How serious were his wounds?

This last point having the biggest impact on his speed and route of evacuation.

 

Not a lot of help I'm afraid.

Charlie

1522147523_GWFRScotsWoundedCasList24Aug1916.JPG.c6936f7673f6a52ec97097bc1918402a.JPG

 

Williamson 3168 was 11th Bn and there is a FMP misc caslist showing he was admitted KGeorge Hosp Stamford on 20/7/16 Severe Wound

Edited by charlie962
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Thanks Charlie.

 

Somme: Battle of Bazentin, (14 – 17 Jul, 1916). The 11th Royal Scots were in the front line and attacked the German line in the early hours of July 14th. They quickly achieved their first objective, capturing 63 German prisoners in the process, but their success came with a high cost of casualties.

 

More frontal attacks of the German lines were undertaken by the 11th Royal Scots on the following days, as the 9th Division attempted to secure all their objectives of the initial attack.  The Battalion was relieved from their front line duties at 8pm on the 17th July.

 

So, a simplistic set of answers is that:

  1. Likely that just about everyone was in the same place engaged in some way in the same attack
  2. There was not "much" movement back and forth.
  3. I have no idea how badly wounded he was except that I do know he was back in action with the 11th in July/Sept 1917 because he won the MM.

I found another 4 men on the casualty list who were 11th RS but none of them had surviving service records. I will take your suggestion and see what I can dig up. The casualty lists for subsequent days is substantially larger and going through those in FMP may yield a pattern.

 

Peter

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4 hours ago, PJS said:

going through those in FMP may yield a pattern

It often comes back to  a hard slog through lists of names. You will find that FMP also throws up those very useful odd bits of paper from other men's service files. Often old Casualty lists torn in half used as scrap pads. Here are a couple of tantalisingly close but incomplete examples that come up for Williamson. Who knows what you may find going through the next day's Official Casualty List ?

1814929008_GWFRScotsWoundedMiscList1916.JPG.627cc1532f6d2d9092b593829b41a49d.JPG

850418070_GWFRScotsWounded2MiscList1916.JPG.9b0203c079e6a71cd116f23ae01069f5.JPG

 

Bon courage, do let us know how you get on.

Charlie

Edited by charlie962
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Of course if Slater appeared on one of these scraps then FMP would normally have indexed it but suppose there was a transcription error on the original ? not unusual.

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And don't you just wonder what this bit of paper was torn from? Clearly used to compile the hometown bit for the Official Casualty List . What else might it have told us ?

1673789383_GWFRScotsWoundedMiscFMPList.JPG.55ccb549313f5335c23fd5b4c8667c85.JPG1671404870_GWFRScotsWoundedCaslist24Aug1916.JPG.1770568ba78387ab965786a897969327.JPG

Two columns of ditto (one might be 11thBn) A column of N and a column of initials AR

Edited by charlie962
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That IS a curious bit of paper. Where did you find it?

 

Charles O'Neill        10662    ?
Sinclair Stewart       14909    11th Royal Scots
William Watson        20373    ?
Joseph Austin          9742      2nd Royal Scots
Arthur Lucas           16788     11th Royal Scots
Elijah Brewster        9244      2nd Royal Scots
George Smith          12896    13th Royal Scots
William Mowatt        13117    ?

 

 

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That piece of paper comes from the service record of 5034 G Mein MGC. It was a scrap piece re-used for something in Mein's record. These are indexed on FMP. They do exist on Ancestry but they're not indexed.

 

For your medical evacuations you could do a lot worse than see the ADMS diary for 9th Division. If you have access to Ancestry diaries; tick the match all terms exactly box - enter July 1916 as the date and 1748 in the keyword box and go for the first entry. This diary is unusually detailed for a divisional diary. It is mainly concerned with evacuations from battlefield to ADS or CMDS. Numerous ADS are mentioned. Plus there is a sketch map showing the route from RAP back to ADS etc.

 

Or if you want to buy it for £3.50 WO95/1748/2

 

For the evacuations back from ADS & CMDS to CCS and the separation of lightly wounded to collecting posts, rest camps etc. You would need the DDMS diary for XIII Corps and ditto for 4th Army. I have those so could check them later.

 

I've just looked at the records for Dobbin, Hughes and Watts and am a bit stumped by 16 CCP for Watts' SW L Leg. It's certainly not 16 CCS and can't be 16 Corps Collecting Post. It's possibly a Corps Collecting Post run by 16th Division? Up to this point they operated on a divisional basis so 9th Division would have 9th Divisional Rest Camp, 9th Walking Wounded Collecting Post etc. This was changed to a Corps arrangement so that XIII Corps arrranged the ADS, CMDS, Rest Camps, and various collecting posts. You then have references to 13 CMDS, 13 CRS, 13 WWCP, but this did cause confusion so you do find things like 13 C DRS or 9 WWCP (where 9 is the division running the Corps WWCP.

 

The DDMS XIII Corps does state that 5 CCS was operating as the CCCP. This could be some new abbreviation, again perhaps a bit confused - my guess 'Combined Corps Collecting Post'

 

Dobbin. Admitted to 96 Field Ambulance. Quite plausible as 96 FA were operating as bearers for 35 Div in Trones Wood 8/7/1916.

 

Anyway, the other aspect is that Watts' injury was severe enough to be back in the UK in days which makes me doubt it was a Collecting Post but I have no other suggestions as yet.

 

Going back to Edwin Slater and I suspect you know a lot of this but his evacuation from battlefield to Hospital in France or UK depends on a variety of factors.

  • Type and severity of wound. Could dictate method of evacuation and/or determine the next stage.
  • Wounded immediatley or later in day. Once large numbers of wounded started to enter the chain of evacuation things tend to start clogging up. This causes delays in evacuation and may result in a new scheme being set in place and/or another CCS ordered to open up.
  • Which CCS. Wounded were designated by injury to certain CCS groups. Precisely which CCS at EG Heilly group just depended on which one was receiving at the time of arrival. Treatment & care could then vary from one to another within the same group. A man could be retained in one for 2 days or evacuated from another the same day for identical injuries.
  • Which Ambulance Train. The CO of a CCS would order up an AT for x number of walking, sitting, lying cases. He had no control over where it was going. Sometimes there can be 3 ATs a day from a CCS group, all going to different bases & therefore ports.
  • Hospital. Once arrived at base by AT wounded could find themselves admitted to French Hospitals or loaded onto home bound ships.

TEW

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12 hours ago, PJS said:

William Watson        20373    ?

Nov 1915 he was also wounded.  11th Bn at the time but not to say he definitely came back to the same Bn!

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Thank you for your comprehensive reply TEW. That is all very good information. I will certainly take a good look at the three War Diaries you mentioned.

 

In the meantime, I have started to go through the casualty lists for the Royal Scots on the surrounding days. There were 143 on August 22nd ...

 

Peter

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52 minutes ago, charlie962 said:

Nov 1915 he was also wounded.  11th Bn at the time but not to say he definitely came back to the same Bn!

 

The Royal Scots seem to have an unusual number of men who switched between the various Battalions. I saw one Medal Roll page that listed a single soldier but the whole page was filled with the different Battalions the man had served in. Well traveled.

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Peter, the DDMS & 4th Army DMS dairies are not online. Downloadable from TNA. If you want to wait till I can check them I could give a pointer for the best options.

TEW

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12 minutes ago, TEW said:

Peter, the DDMS & 4th Army DMS dairies are not online. Downloadable from TNA. If you want to wait till I can check them I could give a pointer for the best options.

TEW

 

Yes, if you wouldn't mind, please take a look and let me know if there is anything in there that would make it worthwhile for me to pay for a download from TNA.

 

Thank You

Peter

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Peter,

I've had a fairly quick look through XIII Corps DDMS and 4th Army DMS diaries for July 1916.

the DDMS diary WO95/904/1 is well detailed on the 'what actually happened' side of things rather than the reams of plans normally included as appendices, in fact it has no appendices at all. The diary does detail the locations of ADS, MDS, Walking wounded posts and who was manning them, how men were moved from one to the other and which CCSs were involved.

 

4th Army DMS diary WO95/447/4 is a similar story. However, this diary is for July 1916 only and there are about 60 pages of handwritten diary so it can run to a few pages per day. Again, a lot of detail on what happened.

 

Both diaries refer to the re-newed attack of 14/7/1916 and update the loctions of medical posts etc from 14th July.

 

XIII Corps diary for 14/7/1916 does mention a large number of severe cases being sent to the Corbie group of CCS. The evacuation tables from Corbie group are in the next diary 447/5 so I'll add those as attachments, NB Corbie entries. Also included is a location table of CCSs 15/7/1916.

 

Incidently XIII Corps at the time comprised of 3rd, 9th, 18th & 30th Divisions with 35th Division in reserve. If I've got this right that would give you 12 Field Ambulances involved with 3 more in reserve. Field Ambulances in order of divisions above ; 7, 8, 142 -

27, 28, South African - 54, 55, 56 - 96, 97, 98 - 105, 106 & 107. Just in case you wanted to look at those on ancestry!!

 

I'm none the wiser with regard to 16 CCP, nothing I've seen relates to the number 16. It could be a typo/misreading by whoever wrote up the B.103, as sheer guess work possibly 96 FA were running the CCP.

TEW

p1.jpg.7cffff9dba6ac68ed40b076dbe3212ff.jpg

 p2.jpg.cc9bb4ef335db27781dfd8f5bd1c6e5a.jpg

ccs.jpg.a48f62200699ef303ab448a9caaf224b.jpg

 

 

 

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TEW,

 

Thank you for this additional information. Looks like I have lots of reading (and transcribing) to do!

 

I'm sure you have already looked but below is the B.103 for Arthur John Watts. Right or wrong it's definitely a 16.

 

AJ-Watts.PNG.8cfcfe12d9f86e921791bdb46e32c463.PNG

 

Thanks Again

Peter

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Yes did see the original, looking again I wonder if he's just written 16 by accident. It is dated 16/7/16, perhaps the clerk just automatically wrote 16 again. There's no 16th Division or 16th FA involved.

TEW

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