Durrington Camp, Verne Citadel & Littlemoor.

[aley]

Writing up some family history and hoping to illustrate as many of the 'facts' as possible (re. service A.I.F). I am looking for images of Durrington Camp, Salisbury cicra 1917, Verne Citadel, Portland c.1918 and Littlemoor, Weymouth c.1918. AWM has nada or next to. A general view of these camps would be ideal. Wondering if someone has an image or images of either of these locales and if they'd be happy to provide me with scans for this purpose?

- David.

P.S. P.O. stamp on letters reads: "-DURRINGTON CAMP .B.O.-" or possibly B.Q.? What does that stand for?

[cheapchippy]

Could somebody please tell me the meaning of "Permanent Cadre", to 3rd Training Battalion, Durrington?

[Moonraker]

A cadre is the complement of commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers responsible for training the rest of the unit, its permanent skeleton establishment around which the full unit can be built.

 

In your case, the cadre would have trained a batch of recruits at one camp and after the recruits had departed would have moved to Durrington to train another lot.

 

I have the 3rd & 4th Royal Irish Regiment at Durrington in late 1918 and the 3rd Royal Irish Rifles there from  April to June 11, 1918; in May the Rifles absorbed the 17th, 18th, 19th & 20th battalions.

 

However, Durrington Camp was contiguous with the better-known Lark Hill Camp (nowadays an expanding barracks known as Larkhill) and it may be that other 3rd battalions have been recorded as being at Lark Hill but were in fact at Durrington.

 

(It would have been better to have started a new thread focussing on what a "permanent cadre" was. I only bothered to look at this thread because I know a bit about Durrington Camp.. But let's stick with this one.)

 

[Moonraker]

On 17/06/2007 at 00:26, aley said:

P.S. P.O. stamp on letters reads: "-DURRINGTON CAMP .B.O.-" or possibly B.Q.? What does that stand for?

Thirteen years later, Aley has got me puzzled. I've got many examples of such postmarks, but I've never thought to find out what "B.O" stands for. "Branch Office"????  The answer must be somewhere on the Web, but I'm already running late. (APO = Army Post Office; FPO = Field Post Office.)

 

Hopefully someone else is not so rushed and knows or can find out the answer.

[cheapchippy]

Thankyou Moonraker

[Moonraker]

On 17/06/2007 at 00:26, aley said:

Writing up some family history and hoping to illustrate as many of the 'facts' as possible (re. service A.I.F). I am looking for images of Durrington Camp, Salisbury cicra 1917, Verne Citadel, Portland c.1918 and Littlemoor, Weymouth c.1918. AWM has nada or next to. A general view of these camps would be ideal. Wondering if someone has an image or images of either of these locales and if they'd be happy to provide me with scans for this purpose?

- David.

P.S. P.O. stamp on letters reads: "-DURRINGTON CAMP .B.O.-" or possibly B.Q.? What does that stand for?

I emailed the Forces Postal History Society, whose secretary has confirmed that "B.O." indicates "Branch Office".  I must have missed Aley's request when he posted it 13 years ago.  I have some 20 postcards of Durrington Camp on Salisbury Plain but hardly any are particularly  exciting.

 

(Do I set some sort of record for the longest delay in answering a post? Aley hasn't visited us since September 27, 2010, but I shall make a forlorn attempt to PM him.)