Serial Enlistment (again): How I first learned about it. But would it have worked?

[rolt968]

Many colleagues will know that I have an onging interest in a particular serial enlister. The recent thread which included references to serial enlistment reminded me of something.

I first found out about serial enlistment meny years before my interest in WW1. It came from a film called Rogue's March which I must have seen on possibly its one and only showing on UK terrestrial TV. (It's not exactly a masterpiece!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2OOyU9Cv84

At about 30:00, the hero having been unjustly (but literally) drummed out overhears a sergeant describing what is effectively serial enlistment.

However I have subsequently wondered if what the sergeant describes could actually work. After the reforms of the early 1880s, would a recruit be able to manipulate his way into an outgoing or incoming battalion (whichever he wanted).

Also did the army not look for deserters having joined other units?

I have always been fascinated by this part of the film - what Holliwood script writer in the early 1950s knew about serial enlsiting in the pre 1914 British Army?

RM

[Keith_history_buff]

With regard to the penalty for fraudulent enlistment, the hard labour sentence seemed a rather austere penalty for false enlistment, until I came across this man's service record 2202 Private John Kent, South Wales Borderers.

I was surprised to see that he was in trouble for a fraudulent enlistment 9 years after his enlistment, and it made no immediate sense to me. Then, the subsequent papers on the file told a different story. It was his intention to keep receiving payments for being in the Special Reserve, but he had reenlisted under a false name. There probably was not so much of this fraud taking place, but it then made sense that the austere penalty was in place, as a deterrent to those looking to perpetrate this form of "benefit fraud" in today's parlance.

I have come across a soldier who enlisted in the South Wales Borderers, transferred to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, fought in the Boer War, and was medically discharged on 31 May 1902. To my surprise, he reenlisted in the South Wales Borderers 12 September 1904 under an assumed name. He was killed in action on 15 September 1914.