1918 REORGANISATION- "ATTACHED"

[Guest]

  Hope this is dealt with cogently elsewhere on GWF.  I have now several casualties locally who were killed while "attached" to other regiments. But these attachments seems to have been quite large numbers of men and , given the dispersal and disbandment of so many battered battalions, I am unsure as to why so many men should be listed as "attached" months after any transfers took place.  Examples of this are the men, formerly of 13th Essex  who were attached to 1/28th London Regiment-Artist's Rifles. Or  men of the East Surrey Regiment attached to 1/23 London Regiment.  The latter are borne on the medal roll of the East Surreys but I cannot see why.  Is there some reason why men were transferred but still kept some identity of a previous unit- and for the life of me, if they did still keep some identity, why they are borne on the medal rolls of the new unit?

   I have found this distorts the story- there is no mention of the former 13th Essex men in accounts of the Artist's Rifles. Their casualties are not listed on the Artist's Rifles Roll (a rather smug "look how well we didi." production)- yet the 13th Essex men did a fair bit of the fighting in France in 1918 but get no recognition of it from Artists Rifles write-ups.

    Another example is the men of various London units attached to the 14th Royal Irish Rifles (and other battalions of the same regiment). 14 RIR -Belfast Young Citizens - has a good recent local history done in that neck of the woods but the English "attached" do not figure at all. This was a common problem in 1918- propping up Irish regiments with men from English regiments- a glance at CWGC will show just how many late war casualties have the addresses of loved ones firmly in England.

 

       Apart from the distortions of history, was there any official reason for "attached" rather than simply transferred and rebadged on such a large scale in 1918?  (And there is the moot point of whether those who were "attached" wore the badges of their old unit or the new one)

  

[bootneck]

Sorry, this is only a partial answer,

 

Prior to the formation of the London Regiment in 1908, the 23 London Regiment was the 4th Volunteer Battalion, East Surrey Regiment. Due to the stress of the war in July 1916 the various battalions of the London Regiment resumed their pre 1908 regular affiliations but with no change (with a couple of exceptions) of unit titles.

 

Alison Hiine in her recently published book Haig's Armies: The Replacement of British Infantry Casualties on the Western Front, 1916-1918 (Helion, 2019) makes the point that in 1916 Infantry Base Depots changed from reinforcing individual battalions to reinforcement provided by regiment. I have found this book to be extremely useful and thought provoking as it has helped to answer a number of queries I have regarding research I'm doing on the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment's Battalion Part II Orders.