Mass transfer to the West Kents?

[Chris_Baker]

Just in playing about with "Soldiers Died" the other day, I noticed that almost all of the men of the Royal West Kents who are listed and who had numbers between 201500 and 206500 had been transferred into the regiment from others. There is a lot of them, and there seems to be no pattern. Men had come in from all sorts of units, and had been allocated to several battalions of the West Kents. There are one or two earlier but most seem to have died from July 1917 onwards.

Any ideas what was going on here? Was the RWK some kind of receiving unit for returned wounded or something? Why?

[Alan Seymour]

Just had a quick check in "Invicta" the 1st Battalion's RWK Great War History by Major C. V. Molony.

Chapter X, mentions that the war diaries for Aug-Sep. 1917, do not chronicle many things of particular interest but at the end of the chapter it mentions that during Sep. 1917 they received a draft of 248 which brought the strength of the Battalion, excluding officers, to 828. This was around the time the battalion moved to the Salient.

Alan Seymour

[Terry Carter]

Hi Chris

If you check on Soldiers Died you will also find that a good number of those killed serving in the three City Battalions (14th, 15th 16th Warwicks) had formerly served in other regiments.....mostly cavalry. They too were topped up prior to serving on the Salient in September/October/November 1917.

Terry

[Myrtle]

Chris

One of the men that I am researching was transferred from the Herefords to the Royal West Kents ,dow in September 1917 and was buried in Larch Wood Cemetery. His number, however was 242315.

[AndrewThornton]

Could it be that the men in question were sent from their previous regiments and corps to the 4th (Reserve) Battalion T.F. of the Royal West Kents, given new regimental numbers - the six digit T.F. numbers used from March 1917 - then sent off to France where they were posted onto other battalions of the regiment? Just a thought.

[Nick]

No apologies for resurrecting this thread.

I am most interested in a soldier who falls into this category and am very keen to find out when he moved into the RWK and can't get to the records office to check.

L/Sgt Albert Edward Skinner of Great Chart, Kent, died on 4th November 1917. His service number in the 2/4th RWK was 202537, but he was formerly T.1811 the Buffs.

I have a nice photo that I could post up on another PC.

I have assumed (always dangerous) that he joined the RWK via the Kent Composite Battalion in 1915 but reading this thread I am not so sure. The last post seems to suggest he joined the battalion much later, possibly 1917.

Can anyone offer up any clues or advice?

Regards

Nick