"In From The Cold" - how are folks getting on?

[Terry Denham]

Geoff

Progress is not orderly as people work at different speeds. Whereas we have not yet completed the letter 'A' on both GRO and SDGW, some people are already up to 'S' with SDGW - and Kevin has even done 'Z' !!!!

[John_Hartley]

we must be near Brown now?

A few more batches will get us there. By way of update on the GRO side of things, 38 batches have been issued to volunteers which takes us up to Bowman.

On the SDGW side of things, Kevin & Peter have been doing sterling work and have undertaken most batches. There are only about 6 batches left to do.

Of course, as Terry says, some folk have more time available to devote to the project than others. To nick a current slogan "Every little helps".

John

[Guest KevinEndon]

A quick tally says that there is roughly 6,000 names left to be searched on the SDGW side of things, a breakdown gives it as

SM 575

SN 43

SO 73

SP 146

SQ 13

ST 642

SU 116

SW 81

SY 39

T 1402

U 59

V 141

W 2584

X, Y and Z have been done.

Kevin

[bhbertram@tiscali.co.uk]

Just to give you brave volunteers an idea of how difficult it can be....!

One of the potentially 'missing' men sent to me in Kevin's first batch (from SDGW) was as follows...

Sjt Charles Edward COLLINS MM 59747 Royal Welsh Fusiliers Died 24.12.18

Kevin couldn't find him on CWGC - and nor could I despite intensive searching for an hour using every trick in the book. I looked on Ancestry for the service record (luckily A-C are online). No luck there and so I tried the MICs.

I found that this man had three MICs. The index entries for them showed on the first that his details were as per Kevin's list. On the second it said that he had gone from the RWF to the Training Reserve as as No. 24476 (couldn't find him on CWGC under that either). On the third it said that be became a captain in the Royal Irish Rifles (no luck there either)!

By now, I couldn't let it rest and so I plumped for the captain MIC and invested £3.50 to download the actual document.

This solved the puzzle and no wonder he couldn't be found. He turned out to be buried in Brighton very near to where I live - in a war grave I know well!

Who would have guessed that Sjt Charles Edward COLLINS MM RWF was actually Capt Coutart de Butts TAYLOR MM Royal Irish Rifles!!!!! He used an alias whilst serving as an OR but reverted to his true name on becoming an officer (for the second time IIRC - a Boer War veteran).

Terry - Check out my my account "Honour Redeemed" on the Channel Island Great War website: www.greatwarci.net for an account of Coutart de Butts Taylor. I've probably been researching his story for about four years!