Royal West Surrey Regiment

[Bordercollie]

I know that my grandfather enlisted in the Royal West Surrey Regiment on 1st September 1914 thanks to the Surrey History Centre's excellent rough register of recruits to the Regiment.  I have been unable to find any other details of his service but I recently found his Royal Air Force service record on Find My Past which includes mention of his previous army service.  According to the record he served with the Royal West Surrey Regiment for 2 years and 249 days but I cannot work out the meaning of the middle portion of record and I wondered whether anyone might be able to help me decipher it.  It looks like "21 TP Bn" but that doesn't make much sense to me.

[charlie962]

38 minutes ago, Bordercollie said:

It looks like "21 TP Bn" but that doesn't make much sense to me.

I suspect it is 21st TR Bn

See LLT here

Note that posting to a TR Bn didn't have to be related unit to his previous RWS unit.

 

Charlie

[Mark1959]

What was your grandfather’s name?

 

[Bordercollie]

Thank you Charlie. I see that the 21st TR Bn was formed from 11/East Surrey on 1st September 1916 and so I assume that he must have served somewhere else with RWS for the first two years of his service. 

 

Mark his name was George Miller and his regimental number with RWS was 361.

[Bordercollie]

I see from the LLT that 9th (Reserve) Bn RWS was absorbed into battalions of 5th Reserve Brigade (of which 21st TR Bn was one) in September 1916. So it might be reasonable to assume that my grandfather began his service in 9/RWS. I had always assumed that he had served in either 10/RWS or 11/RWS because he had served in the Army of Occupation and he had once mentioned moving to Italy in a sort of cattle truck but I could never find any evidence to substantiate that theory. But now it looks like mystery solved. Thanks for your help in getting me there. 

[charlie962]

1 hour ago, Bordercollie said:

Surrey History Centre's excellent rough register of recruits to the Regiment.

Is that something they compiled or is it an attestation ledger (isn't a copy available on findmypast ?)

 

 

Charlie

Edited 31 August , 2019 by charlie962

[Bordercollie]

I think the information might be on FindMyPast but it can also be downloaded for free from Surrey Archives

 

https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/66314/Queens-Royal-West-Surrey-Regiment-Rough-Register-of-Recruits-1914-1917-Surnames-A-L.pdf

https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/66315/Queens-Royal-West-Surrey-Regiment-Rough-Register-of-Recruits-1914-1917-Surnames-M-Z.pdf

[PRC]

2 hours ago, Bordercollie said:

I know that my grandfather enlisted in the Royal West Surrey Regiment on 1st September 1914 thanks to the Surrey History Centre's excellent rough register of recruits to the Regiment.  I have been unable to find any other details of his service but I recently found his Royal Air Force service record on Find My Past which includes mention of his previous army service.  According to the record he served with the Royal West Surrey Regiment for 2 years and 249 days but I cannot work out the meaning of the middle portion of record and I wondered whether anyone might be able to help me decipher it.

 

So does his date of joining the Royal Flying Corps tie up with that date of enlisting in The Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment). The reason for asking is that I see that the Rough Register of Recruits only shows him signing up for a year. He could have legally walked away from the Army at the start of September 1915, and unless he'd opted from the outset for Home Service with a Territorial Force 2nd line unit, he might have got bored of kicking his heels in the UK by then.

 

This was a problem throughout the war years for the Army with those men who had term of enlistment which had expired.

 

Of course he could then have been conscripted in the spring of 1916 and found himself back in the Army and being posted to a Training Reserve Battalion.

 

52 minutes ago, Bordercollie said:

I think the information might be on FindMyPast but it can also be downloaded for free from Surrey Archives

 

https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/66314/Queens-Royal-West-Surrey-Regiment-Rough-Register-of-Recruits-1914-1917-Surnames-A-L.pdf

https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/66315/Queens-Royal-West-Surrey-Regiment-Rough-Register-of-Recruits-1914-1917-Surnames-M-Z.pdf

 

To try and find out a bit more I tried following up the Territorial Force idea by looking at the surnames M-Z file looking for men who enlisted on the 1st September 1914. Amongst the 96 potential matches I found a cluster on men who signed up for 1 year and they all had service numbers between 245 & 520. Note I did not find anyone within that service number range who signed up for any other term. There may be information in the second file that contradicts that, but it's not a small exercise.

 

The men I found , (in service number order, with length of engagement and age). were:-

245 S C Oakley 1 year aged 32 years

265 H Marshall 1 year aged 44 years 300 days

270 G H Tingley 1 year aged 35 years

274 A Merredew 1 year aged 274

275 H J Rolfe 1 year aged 43 years

278 F A Plunkett 1 year aged 42 years 240 days

280 W Treble 1 year 34 years 150 days

322 F Stevenson 1 year aged 45 years

331 H Webb 1 year aged 41 years

332 C Whitmore 1 year aged 39 years.

342 A R Watson 1 year aged 32 years

348 H Matthews 1 year aged 35 years

351 A G Mayger 1 year aged 35 years

352 F Sergeant 1 year aged 40 years

353 C Martin 1 year aged 34 years

358 R F Webb 1 year aged 31 years

359 W H Peach 1 year aged 30 years

362 A A Peake 1 year aged 29 years

368 C J Saunder 1 year aged 40 years

373 A P Taylor 1 year aged 23 years

520 Hy Walter Smith 1 year aged 29 years

 

Looking for Medal Index Cards on the National Archive site for the more unusual names brought up some interesting matches

 

270 G H Tingley probably is Private S/270 George H Tingley, The Queens Regiment. He landed in France on the 11th November 1914 – apparently with the 2nd Battalion.

274 A Merredew probably Private 274 Alfred Merredew, The Queen’s Regiment, later 421694 Labour Corps.

275 H J Rolfe probably Private S/275 Henry J Rolfe, The Queens Regiment. He landed in France on the 2nd November 1914 and again his MiC shows 2nd Battalion. In the remarks section it is noted that he is “Dead”. He actually died a Prisoner of War in Germany on the 23rd March 1915. His unit is shown as the 2nd Battalion.

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/895974/rolfe,-/

280 W Treble is probably Serjeant S/280 William Treble. He landed in France on the 1st June 1915.

359 W H Peach is probably Private S/359 William H Peach. He landed in France on the 8th November 1914. Remarks section notes he was Killed in Action. That happened on the 18th December 1914 and he was serving with the 2nd Battalion. On CWGC he is recorded as aged 32 although the Register shows him aged 30.

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/1643374/peach,-william-henry/

362 A A Peake is probably Private S/362 Aston A Peake. He landed in France on the 8th November 1914. MiC Shows 2nd Battalion. He was discharged and received the Silver War Badge as well as the standard service medals.

368 C J Saunder is probably Private 368 Clifford J Saunder, later Private 319501 Labour Corps. Has 2 MiCs – one is for his 1915 Star having landed in France on the 19th January 1915.

 

The LLT records that the 2nd Battalion of The Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment) landed at Zeebrugge on the 6th October 1914, so the men who went out in November were replacement drafts. To have gone out so soon after enlisting would tend to indicate these were time expired soldiers who had re-enlisted or had some military experience from perhaps being a member of the Territorial Force.

 

There may be some mileage in checking those names to see if any surviving paperwork remains and which will then give some likely insight into the early path your grandfathers' career in the Army took.

The relevant Service Medals Rolls (Ancestry) may provide some insight into the units served with for the men for whom there are no surviving Service Records.

 

If it’s of interest you may want to expand this to look at the men in the A-L file.

 

BTW I’m also assuming the age on enlistment of 28 years does tie in with your grandfather.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

[Bordercollie]

Thank you very much for these further thoughts PRC. I probably need time to absorb it all, but to answer your first question there was definitely a break in service. The RAF records give the length of previous Army service as 2 years and 249 days and so it seems that he was discharged on 8th May 1917. The date of enlistment into the Royal Flying Corps is given as 28th November 1917. There is an entry in the Surrey Recruitment Registers for my grandfather which I think relates to his enlistment in the RFC. No attestation date or regiment is given but his is entry 50677 and entry 50682 was attested on 27th November 1917. The entry for my grandfather gives his medical grade as B2 which could indicate that he was discharged in May 1917 on medical grounds. I assume that he would have needed to be graded A1 for enlistment into the infantry in 1914.

[Mark1959]

There is a reverse of his RAF record card. On that it says Malta 30/8/18 to 5/3/19. British War Medal. This would imply he had seen no other overseas service in a theatre of war. BWM only means served overseas but not where there was fighting. Not totally conclusive.

That medal record is dated 10/5/22.

Trade classification was Driver.

Edited 31 August , 2019 by Mark1959

[Bordercollie]

Thank you Mark. I had seen the reverse of the RAF record and I thought it odd that the end tour date for Malta on the medal record (5/3/19) did not match the date on the movement record (7/2/19) and that the start and end dates on the medal record appeared to have been completed at different times.  My grandfather certainly seems to have gone from Malta to Cologne. Apart from my father's recollection of living in Cologne as a child, the next of kin form for my great uncle, Thomas George Collier who died while a prisoner of war, records his sister, my grandmother, as "staying with soldier husband in Cologne (husband British)". The form is dated 16/11/20. However, the RAF record shows my grandfather's transfer to the RAF Reserve as 4/4/19 and his discharge date as 30/4/20.  So it is not entirely clear in what capacity he could have served in Cologne. 

Edited 1 September , 2019 by Bordercollie

[Mark1959]

A puzzle indeed. I note the RAF card shows some docs were sent to the ministry of Pensions in 1921. This rather implies he was not in the forces at that time. There is no WFA Pensions Ledger Card that I can find for him.