Grandfather's war service

[suesalter1]

My grandfather was Bernard Lewis Salter, service number 93262, Royal Garrison Artillery. His service record has survived, although quite damaged. As far as I can make out, he served in the 190th Siege Battery. My dad always maintained that his father never served overseas as he was not fit enough. Indeed he was discharged on medical grounds in February 1918. Dad  thought grandad was based at Dover Castle.

 

My question is - did the 190th Siege Battery serve overseas or the UK?

 

Thanks,

Sue

[jonbem]

6 minutes ago, suesalter1 said:

My question is - did the 190th Siege Battery serve overseas or the UK?

 

Hi

from Long Long Trail https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-royal-artillery-in-the-first-world-war/the-siege-batteries-of-the-royal-garrison-artillery/

 

190th

France, 13 November 1916

[JasonMc]

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_q=190+siege+battery+royal+garrison+artillery

 

The war diaries here suggest they were in overseas

[Acknown]

The 'Long, Long Trail' website (see tab at the top of this page) is an excellent source of WW1 detail. Here is the relevent page that will answer your question: http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-royal-artillery-in-the-first-world-war/the-siege-batteries-of-the-royal-garrison-artillery/.

You can get the battery War Diaries from the National Archives. See: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_q=190+Siege+Battery&discoveryCustomSearch=true&_cr1=WO+95&_col=200&_hb=tna - currently free.

Acknown

Aha - others beat me to it!

Edited 9 July , 2020 by Acknown

[suesalter1]

Thank you all for your replies.Just goes to show that my dear old Dad got it wrong! Or else, I did! Now to find his medal card, which is proving tricky, even though I have his service number.

 

Sue

[FROGSMILE]

39 minutes ago, suesalter1 said:

Thank you all for your replies.Just goes to show that my dear old Dad got it wrong! Or else, I did! Now to find his medal card, which is proving tricky, even though I have his service number.

 

Sue

Sue the RGA had a series of regional depots based at various coastal fortresses and each was responsible for a set number of allocated companies/batteries.  It might well be that that was the link with Dover Castle, as it would in effect have been the administrative centre for the men in the batteries and so writ large in memory as a place of some import.

Edited 9 July , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[PRC]

2 hours ago, suesalter1 said:

My grandfather was Bernard Lewis Salter, service number 93262, Royal Garrison Artillery. His service record has survived, although quite damaged. As far as I can make out, he served in the 190th Siege Battery. My dad always maintained that his father never served overseas as he was not fit enough. Indeed he was discharged on medical grounds in February 1918.

 

As far as I can make out enlisted 10th December 1915, attested 29th May 1916, so a Derby Scheme man. Appointed 190th Siege Battery on Mobilization according to an Army Pay Book in the file. Discharged 13th February 1918 – at that time with 28 Company.

 

However Statement of Service seems to show posted 1st Siege Depot 29th May 1916. He is then posted somewhere else, (writing faded), possibly 19?? on the 12th August 1916, and 194 “Sge” ??? on the 13th November 1916.

 

There is then an entry that looks like “Siege Art. Mob. Camp, undated, then a reference to Bristol, undated.

 

In fact the only reason for believing he might have served overseas comes from the Military History Sheet section, and even there the damage suffered makes it difficult to decipher. It possibly reads  11.16 B.E.F 30.11.??

 

(Courtesy FindMyPast)

 

So possibly that implies that if he did go overseas it was with 194 Siege Battery and may potentially only have been for a few weeks if the end date was in 1916.

 

Even if he did not go overseas I would expect to find a Medal Index Card relating to the award of a Silver War Badge, but I'm drawing a blank on that.

 

Hope some of that helps,

Peter

[suesalter1]

Thanks for this, Peter. It's a shame his record is so damaged although it's lucky to have survived at all! My dad's been gone 20 years now and my 60+ brain is trying to remember what he told me. No medals have ever come to light, but surely he must have received one or two. I might try looking at the Pension records on the WFA site and see if anything helps there. 

Don't you wish you asked your relatives more when they were alive, although grandad died when I was 4, so that would have been no good!

 

Sue

[FROGSMILE]

17 hours ago, PRC said:

 

As far as I can make out enlisted 10th December 1915, attested 29th May 1916, so a Derby Scheme man. Appointed 190th Siege Battery on Mobilization according to an Army Pay Book in the file. Discharged 13th February 1918 – at that time with 28 Company.

 

However Statement of Service seems to show posted 1st Siege Depot 29th May 1916. He is then posted somewhere else, (writing faded), possibly 19?? on the 12th August 1916, and 194 “Sge” ??? on the 13th November 1916.

 

There is then an entry that looks like “Siege Art. Mob. Camp, undated, then a reference to Bristol, undated.

 

In fact the only reason for believing he might have served overseas comes from the Military History Sheet section, and even there the damage suffered makes it difficult to decipher. It possibly reads  11.16 B.E.F 30.11.??

 

 

(Courtesy FindMyPast)

 

So possibly that implies that if he did go overseas it was with 194 Siege Battery and may potentially only have been for a few weeks if the end date was in 1916.

 

Even if he did not go overseas I would expect to find a Medal Index Card relating to the award of a Silver War Badge, but I'm drawing a blank on that.

 

Hope some of that helps,

Peter

 

The  “Siege Art. Mob. Camp" refers to the units Mobilisation Camp, so he must have reported when embodied.  On the extract of the paper record that is posted I can see just to the right of the black mark the capital letters BEF written in joined up script and to the right a date: 30 .undecipherable and then 18.  To the left of the BEF is another date, the latter part of which is 11. 16, which I would read as November 1916.

Edited 10 July , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[suesalter1]

Still no sign of any medal. Surely everyone who served received one?

 

 

 

[Steven Broomfield]

2 minutes ago, suesalter1 said:

Still no sign of any medal. Surely everyone who served received one?

 

 

 

 

Only if he served overseas.

[suesalter1]

Ah, this proves my case. My dad always said that he served in the UK, although his service record says he was in the 190th Siege Battery, RGA, which did operate overseas. He must not have left these shores.

 

Thanks.

[PRC]

3 hours ago, suesalter1 said:

Ah, this proves my case. My dad always said that he served in the UK, although his service record says he was in the 190th Siege Battery, RGA, which did operate overseas. He must not have left these shores.

 

There are gaps in the MiC records and some are also very mysteriously transcribed in either the National Archive catalogue, the main genealogy sites and sometimes all of them.

 

A better check might be to actually look on Ancestry for the Royal Garrison Artillery Service Medal Roll for the Victory and British War Medal. I’ve just had a look at a couple of pages  I downloaded the last time Ancestry had a free weekend and from those it looks like the RGA Rolls are in Service Number order rather than by surname.

 

So I think some of the names that should be on the same page as your grandfather, (if your grandfather qualified for medals!) are:-

93260 Gunner Harry Read (Roll RGA 151B Page 5107)

93261 Gunner Harry J Rolfe (Roll RGA 151B Page 5107)

93267 Gunner Horatio J Walpole (Roll RGA 151B Page 5108)

93268 Gunner Alfred Thomas Warland (Roll RGA 151B Page 5108)

93269 Gunner Leo Ward (Roll RGA 151B Page 5108)

 

There are Medal Index Cards for others in that batch of 10 service numbers, but one went into the Royal Engineers, one was renumbered in the RGA and one was commissioned, so definitely won’t appear on either of those pages.

 

There are also likely to be a few odds & sods pages of men subsequently allowed medals, or who were administratively missed or who had a medal entitlement reinstated, but if your grandfather is amongst those, short of scrolling all the way through the medal roll, I’m not sure of a short way to eliminate that possibility. However if your grandfather should have been the last or first entry on a particular page of the roll - and looking at the above list, that must be a distinct possibility as it goes from page 5107 to 5108, then in my "real world" experience thats a classic place where a record can fall down the cracks and end up being caught in a mop-up exercise, if at all.

 

As far as the Silver Medal Roll is concerned, (also on Ancestry), I suspect there must be a way to home in on RGA men discharged, like your Grandfather, in the early months of 1918. The Roll will normally tell you if a man served overseas. As we can't collectively seem to find a MiC for even his SWB, it may be that he is recorded under a different number or surname spelling.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

[suesalter1]

I did try this route earlier, but gave up with all the vast amount of names listed. I might try again using some of the names you found. As you suggest, he might have slipped the net (just my luck!) or didn't receive a medal because he didn't go overseas. Someone else said that the RGA had depots in the UK and Dover Castle might be one of them.

 

Sue.

[FROGSMILE]

33 minutes ago, suesalter1 said:

I did try this route earlier, but gave up with all the vast amount of names listed. I might try again using some of the names you found. As you suggest, he might have slipped the net (just my luck!) or didn't receive a medal because he didn't go overseas. Someone else said that the RGA had depots in the UK and Dover Castle might be one of them.

 

Sue.

Don’t give up just yet Sue, if the unit listed on his records went overseas then it still seems possible that he went with it.  As Peter said, there are often spelling and transcription errors on medal indexes and rolls that cause great confusion and mislead.

Edited 11 July , 2020 by FROGSMILE