Mentioned in Dispatches

[Guest Simon Bull]

If a soldier is mentioned in dispatches, whose dispatches to whom are being referred to?

Do any of these dispatches survive at all, so that we can have a rough idea what was being said in these dispatches?

Simon Bull

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

C-in-C's ie Haig.

Ian

[Chris_Baker]

The Commander in Chief of the army in a theatre of war wrote a regular Despatch. These are all in the London Gazette and are available on-line. Most of the LG ones have long lists of staffs, officers and men who are mentioned.

I'm pretty sure though that there must be a category of men 'mentioned', who received the certificate for being so, who are not listed in the LG.

Here's an example: Hamilton's Gallipoli Despatch of 11 december 1915. This one does NOT have a list of mentions.

And another: Murray's Despatch from Egypt, 1 June 1916, which does have a list.

[Guest stevebec]

Chris,

I enjoyed reading Murray's Despatches can you give me the site I can access all of his and Allenby's.

I am interested in the names of Camel Corps soldiers (British/Indian as I have the assies) in particular.

S.B

[Chris_Baker]

Go to the mother site (link above on this screen), and when you're there go to the links page. Click on London Gazette. On the LG site, enter "despatch allenby" or something like that in the search box and you should get the lot.

[Guest Simon Bull]

Thanks gents. I now understand. I had a slighly sneaky off topic reason for asking - ie that my wife's grandfather was mentioned in dispatches in the second world war (according to family repute and also photographs of him in uniform show the oak leaves on his tunic) and I wondered what we would find if we went to the trouble of digging out the relevant reference.

Having seen Chris's very interesting examples we shall definitely follow the matter up when we have the opportunity.

Thanks

Simon Bull