Deciphering codes on service record

[Dawn W]

I'm trying to piece together the war record of my great grandfather and I've managed to trace some relevant war diaries for his service, the codes on this snippet of his record do not appear to match with any recognisable regiment.  Can anyone help?

 

Another entry (on a casualty form) refers to him being a "patient in cons. corps." in August 1915.  Does anyone know what Cons Corp is?

 

I've contacted the TNA and they have been unable to help.

 

Thanks in advance.

Dawn

 

Service Record Snip.pdf

[rksimpson]

HI

 

KRRC =  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Royal_Rifle_Corps

So he went from 5th, 1st, Depot, 5th, 1st...

See here - http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-british-infantry-regiments-of-1914-1918/kings-royal-rifle-corps/

Rfn = Rifleman , same a Private.

regards

 

Robert

[Dawn W]

Thanks Robert for your reply.

 

Could you (or anyone else) help further?)

 

Would Depot be training (1914)? At home (1914) ? Would hospital be a possibility - he was transferred back from France on a hospital ship in Sep 1915 with Posted Depot recorded. 

 

He didn't come home when his daughter died in May 1915 - was this normal?

 

Presumably he was attached to the 1st KRRC as part of the BEF or was the BEF separate to the KRRC?

 

Why would he swop from Depot to 5th when stationed at home?  Readiness for war?

 

Thanks in advance,

Dawn

[johnboy]

the place to start is LongLong Trail button top L of this sites home page

 http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-british-infantry-regiments-of-1914-1918/kings-royal-rifle-corps/

[PRC]

He attested (enlisted) on the 8th December 1914 and reported to the Kings Royal Rifle Corps (K.R.R.C.) Depot at Winchester on the 9th December 1914.

 

After completing basic training he is posted to the 5th Battalion K.R.R.C. at Sheerness on the 5th January 1915. That unit is based in the UK and will provide him with more specialist training and hold him for a future replacement draft to go overseas to a fighting unit of the K.R.R.C.

 

On the 7th April 1915 he sent to France as a reinforcement draft to the 1st Battalion K.R.R.C - one of many units that made up the British Expeditionary Force, (B.E.F) - the British Armies in France & Flanders. His Medal Index Card and Service Medal Roll for his 1914/15 Star should confirm the date, although hopefully the record you have includes his 'Casualty Form-Active Service' which usually gives embarkation and disembarkation place & date.

 

58 minutes ago, Dawn W said:

He didn't come home when his daughter died in May 1915 - was this normal?

 

Unfortunately yes. In the spring and early summer of 1915 the British Army was going through one of its 'regular' manpower crisises. The original old contemptibles had pretty much gone, the returning garrison units and the Indian Army and the best of the Territorial Army units had kept things going over the winter and early spring, but the Army establishment wasn't yet ready to trust the new Kitchener Army units, although these were now starting to arrive in France. Compassionate leave was seen as a luxury.

 

1 hour ago, Dawn W said:

he was transferred back from France on a hospital ship in Sep 1915

 

So at some point later in the summer he was wounded \ suffered an accident \ fell ill \ had health issues and was medically evacuated back to the UK. (Hopefully you have the details!)

 

As he was not likely to return to his unit anytime soon he would be moved onto the establishment of the Depot for pay and disciplinary purposes - he wouldn't have physically been at the Depot. Instead he would have been in hospital, followed by convalescence and then a period of convalescence leave - usually 7 days - before reporting to the depot and then being posted back to Sheerness and the 5th Battalion. There he would have been through refresher training as well as medical assessment to see if he was fit enough to return to the front line.

 

Obviously he was as he was posted back to the 1st Battalion in France & Flanders on the 22nd February 1916 as part of a draft.

 

1 hour ago, Dawn W said:

Another entry (on a casualty form) refers to him being a "patient in cons. corps." in August 1915.  Does anyone know what Cons Corp is?

 

Any chance you can post the relevant part here. I can probably guess but wouldn't want to mislead you.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

[FROGSMILE]

Spot on interpretation Peter and kind of you to decipher it all for Dawn.  I was going to make a similar attempt, but you’ve beaten me to it. 
 

For Dawn:  The KRRC was one of two ‘large’ rifle regiments that had 4 regular battalions and shared the same depot, and HQ with the other, large rifle regiment, the Rifle Brigade, which also had 4 regular battalions.  These 8 regular battalions needed a large barracks to service them, and this was established in Winchester in the mid 1870s and known as the ‘Rifles Depot’.  It was at the Rifles depot that your great grandfather started his service in December 1914.  The barracks buildings still stand and have been converted to qualify housing.  The regimental museum is also located there.

Edited 20 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Ron Clifton]

Hello Dawn, and welcome to the Forum!

 

If it is handwritten, I suspect that "Cons Corps" is in fact "Conv Camp", i.e Convalescent Camp, where he would undergo final medical supervision pending his return to front-line duties.

 

Ron

[Dawn W]

Many thanks to you all for your great help.  I've learnt so much about his early army career which I never expected to find out.

 

Peter, 

I've attached the extract from his casualty form where "cons corps" is stated as his destination on 1 Aug 1915.  It may be written as Conv Corp as Ron suggests - the letter after con is difficult to read.

 

Is it possible to identify which hospital he may have been sent to in England in Sept 1915?

 

Also why would he be posted to the 1st KRRC then the 9th Entrenching Battalion and finally returning to the 1st KRRC?  Was this due to war needs or other reasons.

 

Thanks in advance for all your help

 

KRRC Snip.pdf

 

Edited 20 June , 2020 by Dawn W

[PRC]

1 hour ago, Dawn W said:

I've attached the extract from his casualty form where "cons corps" is stated as his destination on 1 Aug 1915.  It may be written as Conv Corp as Ron suggests - the letter after con is difficult to read.

 

12 hours ago, Ron Clifton said:

If it is handwritten, I suspect that "Cons Corps" is in fact "Conv Camp", i.e Convalescent Camp, where he would undergo final medical supervision pending his return to front-line duties.

 

I have to admit that like Ron I was expecting to see something that with a bit of a squint and slightly wishful thinking could be interpreted as a contraction for “convalescent camp” but I’m not sure that is the case now I’ve seen it.

 

Looks like either:-

“Patient in Cons. Coy” or “Patient in Conv. Coy”

 

“Cons” would normally be the contraction for “Construction” which doesn’t seem appropriate in this context.

“Conv”  would normally be “Convalescent” or “Convalescence” which given that he is described as a Patient would seem to fit.

“Coy” would normally be “Company”.  I’ve never seen “Coy” or “Conv” used as a contraction for “Convoy” which is the only other possible word I could think of that was relevant and might apply to one of those contractions.

 

Note the information appears to have been received from “CO ico Coy” or “Commanding Office in charge of Company”. I wish the word underneath was legible. Also note that while the Place column shows “In the field” there is a pointing line above the date 1.8.15 which seems to add “also Base”. In the Remarks column is also seems to start “List Adm” which probably translates as the source being a daily list of admissions.

 

As to what it all means I can only speculate. Some Medical Officers and Senior Battalion Officers were more understanding of the strain combat could place on individual soldiers and realised that the few days local leave they could offer would not address it, while continually sparing the soldier front line duties would only cause resentments to build up threatening the morale of the unit – maybe also at the risk of the individual feeling survivors guilt. All kinds of informal ways seem to have been tried. I can’t say for sure but perhaps a Convalescent Company, with men expected to do light duties was what was being tried here. Given that we are talking a nominal Company, then I suspect this would have to be a Brigade or even Divisional solution.

 

What was in it for them can be seen by how the situation had moved on by the time your man returned early in 1916.

 

He would have left Sheerness and embarked at Southampton as part of the draft from the 5th Battalion K.R.R.C. bound for the 1st Battalion. Landing at Rouen on the 23rd February 1916 he would have first have all marched into an Infantry Base Depot (I.B.D), – the number is obscured by a fold in the page.

 

At the I.B.D. he was supposed to receive some “in Theatre” training – something that caused a great deal of resentment amongst returning combat veterans and would a be a factor in later mutinies. They would also await transport to join up with their units. But while they were there they could be compulsorarily posted to any unit where the need was great – as the war went a man could consider himself lucky if he even ended up in the same Division as a Battalion of his original regiment.

 

1 hour ago, Dawn W said:

Also why would he be posted to the 1st KRRC then the 9th Entrenching Battalion and finally returning to the 1st KRRC?  Was this due war needs or other reasons.

 

So you have a number of scenarios as to what happened next. Firstly it’s not unknown for these transfers to be cancelled or even put on the wrong mans’ notes. So he may never have ended up with the 9th Entrenching Battalion.

 

Or the 9th Entrenching Battalion may have had a major piece of work that required a significant increase in manpower. Once that task was completed your man was sent on to the 1st Battalion – effectively they just borrowed him.

 

Less likely is that he was still with the 9th Entrenching Battalion when he died and it’s the refence to joining up with 1st KRRC on the 19th April 1916 that is incorrect. One check for that would be to look at the Battalion War Diary for 1st KRRC to see if they received a draft on that day. It’s not foolproof – absence of a reference doesn’t mean he didn’t join them but presence of a reference would help confirm things.

 

1 hour ago, Dawn W said:

Is it possible to identify which hospital he may have been sent to in England in Sept 1915?

 

A very small sample of admission and discharge books covering France, Flanders & the UK, (5%) were passed to the National Archives. FindMyPast have scans of them and Forces War Records say they have transcribed them.

 

I suspect your best hope if there is nothing in your mans’ service record is local newspapers. Throughout the war years reports of local men and which hospitals they were being treated in was a common page filler – many of them relied on reader supplied bits of news sure in the knowledge it would lead to a few more sales.

 

If you live in the UK and these were normal times I'd suggest trying out the British Newspaper Archive at your local library - it quite often forms the basis of the offering thats available when you access online newspaper archives by subscribing to the likes of Ancestry or FindMyPast. Unfortunately not an option at the moment.

 

Hope some of that helps,

Peter

 

[FROGSMILE]

Hello Dawn,

 

Peter has given you an excellent explanation and I agree with all that he’s said, but I’m going to add a few things that I believe are important in understanding the sequence of events.

 

First of all it’s clear from the most recent snippet that you’ve made that your great grandfather suffered from epileptic fits, as these are mentioned several times on the record.  Ostensibly this would relate to epilepsy, although reading between the lines I imagine that it’s not impossible that the fits were caused by some other factor such as shell shock.  See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5137781/

 

Whatever the cause of the fits he suffered from them several times at several locations mentioned.  Personally I am confident reading the notes that he was indeed previously at a ‘convalescent company’ (‘coy’ is what I see too and that had become the standard abbreviation used by the Army for company since the turn of the century), where it seems to me probable that he had been undergoing some kind of therapy for his presumably frequent fitting (going by the subsequent incidences).

 

He was subsequently evacuated home, presumably for specialist treatment of his epilepsy, where as Ron said he would be on the held strength of the 5th Battalion for the purposes of pay and administration.  The name of the ship on which he took passage is noted on the record as Her Majesty’s Hospital Ship George, which ran out of Southampton, with many patients going into the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley that was nearby and where war induced epilepsy was famously being treated.  See:

 

1.  https://www.birtwistlewiki.com.au/wiki/HMHS_St_George
 

2.  https://www.qaranc.co.uk/netleyhospital.php

 

3.  https://www.netleyabbeymatters.co.uk/The-hospitals-at-Netley-1914-1918

 

When your great grandfather returned to France he had been earmarked for his old battalion, the 1st, and just as Peter said he was sent to an Infantry Base Depot (this would have been No 1 IBD at Havre, as it was specifically for the KRRC) for the usual in-processing and theatre training.  
 

During that period of 1916 it had become common that rather than linger in the IBDs men were to be sent to the then several Entrenching Battalions* (see footnote), where they were utilised for the many trench and infrastructure repair tasks that needed doing and that had been building up in the rear areas due to insufficient labour companies (it was for this reason that the Labour Corps was formed the following year, but even then there were never enough).  The policy was that the men worked before eventually being sent in drafts to reinforce the battalions to which they’d been allocated. It was felt that fresh air and manual labouring was in any case good for building up their fitness.

 

In due course your great grandfather was posted from the entrenching battalion to the 1st Battalion, as planned, where he was tragically subsequently killed.  It looks as if his medical grading hovered between B2 and B3, as that is annotated on the record at the point where he rejoined the 1st Battalion.

 

NB.  Given the sequence of units outlined I believe that it’s very likely that your great grandfather had enlisted (signed up) under the terms and conditions of service of a regular soldier.  This gave certain privileges, and one of these was that in most circumstances he would, barring any extreme emergency, invariably go back to his own regular battalion (i.e. not one of the ‘Territorial’, or war ‘Service’ battalions).

 

*note: “Notification received from [Adjutant-General] of the formation of what are called ‘Entrenching Battalions’, for work on rear defence works. They consist of reinforcements normally kept at the Base, who are formed into battalions and utilised for work at the front. They continue to be a pool to be drawn upon for reinforcements to units at the front, and replenished from the Base.”

 

Edited 20 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Dawn W]

Thanks so much for your help so far especially in identifying the convalescent company reference  - sounds like a very informal sympathetic treatment of illness which was ahead of their times.  I now have so many new leads to follow which inevitably will lead to new questions.

 

22 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

In due course your great grandfather was posted from the entrenching battalion to the 1st Battalion, as planned, where he was tragically subsequently killed.  It looks as if his medical

grading hovered between B2 and B3, as that is annotated on the record at the point where he rejoined the 1st Battalion.

 

Do you know what B2/B3 mean?

 

22 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

Given the sequence of units outlined I believe that it’s very likely that your great grandfather had enlisted (signed up) under the terms and conditions of service of a regular soldier.  This gave certain privileges, and one of these was that in most circumstances he would, barring any extreme emergency, invariably go back to his own regular battalion (i.e. not one of the ‘Territorial’, or war ‘Service’ battalions).

 

Yes I believe that he did sign up as a regular soldier.  He received a notice (presumably based on previous service with the North Lancashire regiment) before enlisting.  What privileges would he be entitled to?

 

Finally did all soldiers leave wills?  I've never found one for my ancestor.

 

Thanks in advance,

Dawn

[PRC]

23 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

NB.  Given the sequence of units outlined I believe that it’s very likely that your great grandfather had enlisted (signed up) under the terms and conditions of service of a regular soldier.  This gave certain privileges, and one of these was that in most circumstances he would, barring any extreme emergency, invariably go back to his own regular battalion (i.e. not one of the ‘Territorial’, or war ‘Service’ battalions).

 

Both of the 1st Battalion men recorded as died on the 29th April 1916, (one Killed in Action, one Died of Wounds), have service numbers with an R. prefix. According to Paul Nixons' site, that would make them New Army men. https://armyservicenumbers.blogspot.com/2009/06/kings-royal-rifle-corps-regular.html

 

I'm assuming Dawn hasn't publicly wanted to name who the soldier is, so I''ll try to respect that.

 

The died of wounds man is shown on SDGW as born Church, Lancashire and enlisted Blackburn, Lancashire. On CWGC he is shown as 37 years old. While he could potentially have been a time served Regular Army soldier there is a likely candidate on the relevant censuses aged 12, (1891), 22, (1901) and 32, (1911), which perhaps limits the possibilty. The only previous military service on that mans Service Record is 4 years North Lancs LVA, which I'm taking to mean Local Volunteer Association - so possibly predates the creation of the Territorial Force in 1908 - but not Regular Army.

 

59 minutes ago, Dawn W said:

Finally did all soldiers leave wills?  I've never found one for my ancestor.

 

While there was space in his paybook to write one, not all did or even needed to. One possible indicator is the entry in the Army Register of Soldiers Effects, (available on Ancestry). If the balance of his pay & his war gratuity are shown as being paid to his wife & sole legatee, mother & sole legatee, etc, etc, then there was a will. No reference to legatee and no obvious soldiers will or civil probate held by the probate service, then almost certainly no will.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

[FROGSMILE]

If there is evidence that the man concerned (as you say, we don’t know his name) enlisted as Kitchener Volunteer, then my comments about privileges of a regular would not apply.

[FROGSMILE]

13 hours ago, Dawn W said:

Thanks so much for your help so far especially in identifying the convalescent company reference  - sounds like a very informal sympathetic treatment of illness which was ahead of their times.  I now have so many new leads to follow which inevitably will lead to new questions.

 

 

Do you know what B2/B3 mean?

 

 

Yes I believe that he did sign up as a regular soldier.  He received a notice (presumably based on previous service with the North Lancashire regiment) before enlisting.  What privileges would he be entitled to?

 

Finally did all soldiers leave wills?  I've never found one for my ancestor.

 

Thanks in advance,

Dawn

You will need to do more research to confirm that he was a regular.  Unlike conscripts, who were enlisted for ‘General Service’ and sent wherever the Army deemed necessary, those who joined as regulars enlisted with a specific regiment.  It became their parent unit and if wounded they would be sure to return to one of the regular (usually two, but in some cases four) battalions.  That might not seem much of a privilege, but it did make a difference in terms of a sense of belonging, and a man had more chance of seeing his (surviving) friends and comrades again.  The longer the war went on the smaller the proportion of regulars became and by the end of the war by far the majority were citizen soldiers rather than career professionals.

 

As regards medical gradings, under an Army Council Instruction (ACI), by 1st July 1916, they had become as follows:

 

A able to march, see to shoot, hear well and stand active service conditions

1 fit for dispatching overseas, as regards physical and mental health and training

2  as 1, except for training

3  returned Expeditionary Force men, ready except for physical condition

4  men under 19 who would be Grade A1 or A2 when aged 19

 

B free from serious organic diseases, able to stand service on Lines of Communication, or in garrisons in the tropics

1  able to march five miles, see to shoot with glasses and hear well

2  able to walk five miles, see and hear sufficiently for ordinary purposes

3  only suitable for sedentary work

 

C free from serious organic diseases, able to stand service in garrisons at home

1  As B1

2  As B2

3  As B3

 

D unfit but likely to become fit within six months

1  Regular RA, RE, infantry in Command Depôts

2  Regular RA, RE, infantry in Regimental Depôts

3  men in any Depôt or unit awaiting treatment.

 

E unfit and unlikely to become fit within 6 months

 

NB.  With the above in mind I’m not positive that the B2/3 annotation beside his noted return to 1st Bn KRRC is definitely his medical grading, but it seemed a logical explanation.  By the last year of the war shortages of infantry led to all kinds of expediency.

 

Soldiers were required to complete rudimentary wills, yes.  It was a simple Army Form, although some men attached a hand written note setting out their last wishes.  They were designed to be expedient documents and nothing like the detailed wills drawn up by solicitors.  In circumstances where the form was not completed, or unavailable a soldier was encouraged to write a simple ‘will statement’ on the two blank pages specifically provided for that purpose in every soldier’s Pay Book, the AB64.

 

Edited 22 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Dawn W]

Thanks again. 

 

I hadn't named him because, as a newcomer to this forum, I didn't see the relevance then but I do now.  I'm quite happy to name him - George Leacy R/8049 of 1st KRRC.

 

14 hours ago, PRC said:

he died of wounds man is shown on SDGW as born Church, Lancashire and enlisted Blackburn, Lancashire. On CWGC he is shown as 37 years old. While he could potentially have been a time served Regular Army soldier there is a likely candidate on the relevant censuses aged 12, (1891), 22, (1901) and 32, (1911), which perhaps limits the possibilty. The only previous military service on that mans Service Record is 4 years North Lancs LVA, which I'm taking to mean Local Volunteer Association - so possibly predates the creation of the Territorial Force in 1908 - but not Regular Army.

 

George was born in 1879 and all the information above relates to him.

 

I assumed that he had received notice based on his previous military experience which I believe to predate 1906 (his children were born 1906, 1908 & 1911) and possibly 1902 (his marriage where is recorded as a spinner).  I hadn't noticed the LVA noted on his record - could anyone explain what this was and its relevance to his service record. 

 

I've attached the section of his attestation record where he signs to join up.  I always assumed that conscription started in 1916 but receiving a notice sounds like he was asked to return/conscripted.  If he was conscripted then was he just lucky to be sent back to his original battalion?

 

Thanks in advance

Dawn

 

Service Snip.pdf

[kenf48]

26 minutes ago, Dawn W said:

I assumed that he had received notice

Many of the answers to your questions are on the parent site the Long Long Trail where there is extensive information on researching a soldier and interpreting records. (As previously advised at post 4).  The notice had nothing to do with conscription.

 

e.g.https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/did-you-receive-a-notice/

[FROGSMILE]

1 hour ago, kenf48 said:

Many of the answers to your questions are on the parent site the Long Long Trail where there is extensive information on researching a soldier and interpreting records. (As previously advised at post 4).  The notice had nothing to do with conscription.

 

e.g.https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/did-you-receive-a-notice/

 

If that last sentence was aimed at me Ken, I had not suggested that conscription was connected with the 'notice' that she referred to.  I was merely answering Dawn's specific question about the residual benefit of enlisting as a regular.  At the time she had not revealed the man's name and so his exact status was uncertain.

Edited 22 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[FROGSMILE]

2 hours ago, Dawn W said:

Thanks again. 

 

I hadn't named him because, as a newcomer to this forum, I didn't see the relevance then but I do now.  I'm quite happy to name him - George Leacy R/8049 of 1st KRRC.

 

 

George was born in 1879 and all the information above relates to him.

 

I assumed that he had received notice based on his previous military experience which I believe to predate 1906 (his children were born 1906, 1908 & 1911) and possibly 1902 (his marriage where is recorded as a spinner).  I hadn't noticed the LVA noted on his record - could anyone explain what this was and its relevance to his service record. 

 

I've attached the section of his attestation record where he signs to join up.  I always assumed that conscription started in 1916 but receiving a notice sounds like he was asked to return/conscripted.  If he was conscripted then was he just lucky to be sent back to his original battalion?

 

Thanks in advance

Dawn

 

Service Snip.pdf 95.96 kB · 7 downloads

 

Dawn, I have answered your earlier questions above, which you appear to have missed (see Will Forms, etc.).  

 

You seem, perhaps understandably, to be confused by the difference between soldiers of regular battalions of the infantry regiments (who are professional soldiers), and soldiers of auxiliary units, who are part-time.  

 

The auxiliaries of WW1 were organised in the Territorial Force (TF), whose predecessor organisation was the Volunteer Force (VF). The units within these Forces were part-time citizen soldiers who met locally to drill twice a week and then went home to their families.  In both cases they were largely funded and administered by civilian, 'County Associations'.   They were entirely separate from the Regular Army.

 

The 'LVA' refers to the pre-1908 Lancashire Volunteers Association, which confirms that George Leacy had been a member of the pre-1908 Volunteer Force.  This means that he was an auxiliary pre-1906, and not a regular soldier.  Lancashire was an enormous County at that time in the sense that the Cities had not the same weight that they have now.  The number of units in the LVA was accordingly large.  You can get guidance on researching them here: https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/media/52092/Handlist72militiaandvolunteers.pdf

 

From the details that you have given it is clear from his regimental number that he was one of the so-called 'Kitchener Volunteers', who responded to pleas for men to voluntarily join up and form 'New Armies' to fight the war and bolster the very small Regular Army and Territorial Force.  The men who joined were organised in War 'Service Battalions', but after conscription was introduced they did not have the same rights as regular soldiers and could be sent to any regiment, or battalion that the Army saw fit.  This is how George ended up with the 1st Battalion, because there were insufficient regulars to maintain its fighting strength.

Edited 22 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[PRC]

3 hours ago, Dawn W said:

I hadn't named him because, as a newcomer to this forum, I didn't see the relevance then but I do now.  I'm quite happy to name him - George Leacy R/8049 of 1st KRRC.

 

Glad I hadn't got the wrong man

 

I was being circumspect because one of the themes that crops up from time to time in those coming to ask questions about relatives is that the solder \ sailor \ airman concerned might be regarded as the blacksheep of the family and so they don't always share a name. Biological father of a grandmother \ grandfather is a not infrequent cause of such postings, with the soldier concerned as likely to be already married as not. I have no desire to wash any other families dirty laundry in public - I have enough of it in my own family tree !

 

2 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

whose predecessor organisation was the Volunteer Force (VF). The units within these Forces were part-time citizen soldiers who met locally to drill twice a week and then went home to their families.

 

The 1908 introduction of the Territorial Force saw a significant chunk of the funding taken over by the War Office - something bitterly resented by the Army. Despite a spate of new Drill Halls, standardisation of weaponry, uniform, drill & procedures, and the introduction of Regular Army instructors and Adjutants on loan, the new Territorial Force failed to find favour with new recruits while a significant number of the old Militia and Yeomanry refused to transfer over and simply left. The Territorial Force was still significantly understrength at the start of the Great War. Despite an increase in pay and prestige, the resulting additional commitments, including at least one week of a two week annual summer camp had simply proved too much. I can't speak for Lancashire, but in a mainly rural county like Norfolk where the bulk of the work was agricultural or fishing, those summer camps came at the peak earning time of the year. In Norwich the shoe factories did close down for a week in August, (unpaid, workers were expected to save over the previous 51 weeks to pay for it), but this seldom co-incided with the annual camp. Only the farm labourers on a few of the big estates where the owner took a keen interest in military matters could count on being released - indeed on the Kings' estate at Sandringham willingness to serve in the Territorial Force seems to increased your chances of being hired.

 

I can't know for sure, but it may well be that if George hadn't left the LVA by the time of the formation of the Territorial Force, he simply chose not to transfer over.

 

4 hours ago, Dawn W said:

If he was conscripted then was he just lucky to be sent back to his original battalion?

 

Possibly a combination of luck and timing. He returned to France in February 1916 and an Infantry Base Depot, (IBD), went for a short while to an Entrenching Battalion and then back to the 1st Battalion KRRC - no mention of him going back to the Infantry Base Depot.

 

Meanwhile in March 1916 conscription started and the first of the men who had signed up under the Derby Scheme were called up. From then on the distinction between Regular, Territorial & War Service only, (aka Kitcheners Army) faded away. Certainly in the case of men I've had cause to research it seems to have become much more likely that men sent out as a draft for one regiment would be redirected on reaching the IBD. Which raises the sad prospect that if he'd been sent back to the IBD, he might have been posted to another unit and survived the war - so maybe bad luck.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

[FROGSMILE]

Peter I tried to keep things as uncomplicated as I could for Dawn.  I am aware of the difficulties of the transition from VF to TF that you have so ably detailed, and there is no way that George could have 'transferred over' even if he'd wished to.  There were substantial differences between the terms and conditions of service between the VF and the TF and so for legal reasons the VF was formally disestablished and the TF raised as a new organisation.  My understanding is that men serving in the VF could choose to join the TF (and were encouraged to do so), but they did so by signing on under the new regulations rather than transferring.  As there is enough complication for Dawn to try and grasp I thought it best not to muddy the waters of her understanding by going into the minutiae, the key thing is that George was an auxiliary soldier and that's all really that she needs to appreciate.

 

NB.  It's also true that former Regular officers and NCOs were employed by the VF as adjutants, and drill (including musketry) instructors since long before the TF was formed.

Edited 22 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Dawn W]

Thank you all so much for your time and effort.  I never thought that I would be able to uncover so much information about George together with all the useful background information too.

 

I never thought of the blacksheep theory though it does make sense.  He was definitely not the blacksheep of the family - although my grandfather rarely spoke of him, he was clearly proud of him when he did tell of the few memories he had.

 

I'll absorb all this fantastic information and, no doubt, will make further use of this forum and the longlongtrail information.

 

Once again, many thanks for your help,

Dawn