This has been bugging me.
One of my Great Grandfathers was a clerk on the Great Eastern Railway, in the East End of London. He somehow managed to avoid service in the Great War (although don't ask me how ... some railwaymen were exempt from call up but surely not pen-pushers?), and towards the end of the war he is found, temporarily, in Guildford.
I know this because one of my Great Uncles was born in Guildford in 1918, at an address in Cemetery Road, although my Great Grandmother (who was the informant) still gives her East End address on the birth certificate. She was not, however, simply visiting in Guildford when she went into labour, because I also have a 1918 press report from the Surrey Advertiser of my Great Grandfather being fined 7/6 for cycling without a rear light, and his address is given in that report, and it is the same address in Cemetery Road which appears on my Great Uncle's birth certificate.
Soon after the end of the Great War, the family is back at the old address in the East End.
So why the temporary relocation to Guildford, which was never served by the Great Eastern Railway? I just don't get it. I mean, I know that the railways were all under the control of the Railway Executive for the duration of the war and a time afterwards, so I can quite see that key staff might be redeployed across company boundaries to meet urgent operational needs ... but clerks???
I simply can't make head or tail of it. So I'm opening it up as an open-ended discussion thread, to see if anyone else has any thoughts or ideas?