Can anyone help with this unit - Royal Engineers

[Penywern]

Hello to all,

I'm researching members of my family who served during 1914 - 1918, but I'm having trouble with my great grandfathers unit. He was in the Royal Engineers, throughout the war, but its only been this week that I've found a referance to his unit which means nothing to me. Maybe someone will have the answer out there,

his unit is listed as 309 C.R. Co R.E.

Many thanks to all who have had a look at this.

Phillip

[Terry_Reeves]

Philip

It's 309 Road Construction Company RE. Unfortunately, there are only two war diaries for these types units at the National archive: 306 and 319 Coys. They would be worth looking at to give you an idea of the tasks involved. 309 Coy served on the Western Front.

Terry Reeves

[Penywern]

Philip

It's 309 Road Construction Company RE. Unfortunately, there are only two war diaries for these types units at the National archive: 306 and 319 Coys. They would be worth looking at to give you an idea of the tasks involved. 309 Coy served on the Western Front.

Terry Reeves

Thank You Terry

Do you happen to know if the company's were attached to units or operated as and where needed.

Phiilip

[Hoplophile]

The chief difficulty faced by people doing research on units like road construction companies is that they were designed to be moved from one high-level formation (army corps, army, GHQ, lines-of-communication) to another with very little trouble or paperwork and thus left very little in terms of a paper trail.

If you cannot find the war diary for the particular unit you are looking for, you can use the 'parallel war diary' technique for finding mentions of its location.

Firstly, find the war diary of a similar unit serving in the same theatre of operations. (The computer catalogs at both the British and Canadian National Archives can be used for this.)

Secondly, find the formation (e.g. army corps or army) to which the similar unit was assigned.

Thirdly, look in the records of formations that were 'parallel' to the similar unit. (That is, if the similar unit was part of the Third Army, look in the records of the First Army and the Second Army.)

[Penywern]

Many Thanks,

Have used the Digital Postal Service for War Diary's from the NA at Kew which I recommend, for the two listed Road Construction units.

This has been a well worth route as although one diary for the 306 only listed 2 pages, the other for the 311 has over 200 pages and given a good views of the work carried out.

But also lists the 311 as working with the 2nd Anzac Corps (2nd Army) from May 1917.

Phillip

[KONDOA]

Phillip,

Is the 306 diary available on line or did you have to order and download some time later?? One of my men were in 306.

Roop

[Penywern]

Phillip,

Is the 306 diary available on line or did you have to order and download some time later?? One of my men were in 306.

Roop

Hello Roop,

The diary itself is not available on line but you can order it online at a cost of £6.50, and you should recieve images of the pages within a day or two.

Basically they will digitally photo them and then send an email to you with a link, clink on the link and you come to images which you can then down load. Overal quick and very useful, there is a BUT though, you only get 6 images max. But they will (or they have in the past) inform you of how many pages there to the diary, so you can get a good idear of its worth.

Just go to the 'National Archives web site, then search in the catalogue (put Royal Engineers and WO 95) and hey presto.

All the best

Phillip