An Englishman Joins the CEF (in England)

[Terry]

Having just won on ebay a trio of medals to 47170 Pte.A.A.Andrews,15th Bn., CEF, I took a look at his online attestation papers. Like so many other members of the First Contingent Albert Arthur Andrews was an Englishman, born in Norwich, but while most of the others were immigrants to Canada, he doesn't appear to have had any particular Canadian links.

He was married, and listed his next of kin in Maidstone,Kent. He enlisted at Tidworth on 19 Nov., and his medical certificate was signed 20 Nov., at Salisbury Plain. The Canadian division had arrived in England in mid-October, but I am puzzled as to why this Englishman decided to join the CEF instead of the British Army.

By the way, he is listed as Missing in Action after 2nd Ypres, and isn't on the CWGC site or in the Wigney book, so I assume he was taken prisoner. I look forward to getting his service file from Ottawa.

[jhill]

I have noticed that this happened a number of times with the first contingent. Usually, it seems that in the confusion of sending the first lot over, some units like field ambulances were allowed to recruit locally to make up for deficiencies in men with speciallized skills. This does not seem to be the case here, as there is a whole swatch of men enlisted locally for the 17th Battalion, which at the time was training as an ordinary infantry battalion.

I would speculate that the commander of the 17th might have been trying to recruit up to full strength. The 17th was basically the unit composed of "those who were left over" after the first 16 battalions were formed, so they did not go to England at full strength.

It seems that officialdom soon stomped on this practice, and Canadian units were not permitted to recruit in England. There was some discussion about this in Canadian newspapers in the new year.

As to why an Englishman would prefer a Canadian unit to a British unit, one need only look at the relative rates of pay. (Or so it seems to me!)

[chris.wight]

Terry, this is an interesting one; the initial declaration on his attestation papers is dated November 19, 1914 while the Certificate of Magistrate was signed, it appears, on Jany 27, 1915. Why the long delay between dates? Hopefully his service record will explain more.