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General => Armed Forces => World War One => Topic started by: Romilly on Friday 30 March 07 20:08 BST (UK)
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This is a bit of a long shot...
but I wonder if someone can help?
I'm looking for a Death Entry for an Australian Soldier who died in WW1, -( towards the end of 1918/beginning of 1919). (I know there was a Spanish Flu outbreak about then).
His Surname was McGowen, but I'm unsure about his Christian name.
His father was James Sinclair Taylor McGowen, (1855 - 1922). McGowen Snr apparantly lost three sons in WW1, - Frank Noel was killed at Gallipolli, but I'm not sure about the other two sons.
Any ideas welcomed.
Many Thanks, Romilly.
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McGOWAN, JAMES
Initials: J
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Private
Regiment/Service: Australian Infantry, A.I.F.
Unit Text: 52nd Bn.
Age: 39
Date of Death: 05/04/1918
Service No: 6816
Additional information: Son of John and Helen Davidson McGowan; husband of Mary McGowan of The Bungalow, Penshurst St., Penshurst, New South Wales. Born at Kilsyth, Scotland.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Memorial: VILLERS-BRETONNEUX MEMORIAL
McGOWAN, JOSEPH BERNARD
Initials: J B
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Company Sergeant Major
Regiment/Service: Australian Infantry, A.I.F.
Unit Text: 30th Bn.
Age: 38
Date of Death: 24/03/1918
Service No: 473
Awards: D C M
Additional information: Son of John and Emily McGowan; husband of Margaret McGowan, of Ida St., Mayfield, New South Wales. Native of Dubbo, New South Wales.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: III. D. 2.
Cemetery: LA PLUS DOUVE FARM CEMETERY
Name: McGOWAN, THOMAS
Initials: T
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Private
Regiment/Service: Australian Infantry, A.I.F.
Unit Text: 48th Bn.
Date of Death: 05/04/1918
Service No: 2702
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Memorial: VILLERS-BRETONNEUX MEMORIAL
These are the only 3 on CWGC. Do they have anything familiar on them?
regards
tisgrannie
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They had no listings for the name McGowen!!
tisgrannie
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Hi Romilly :)
Frank's WW1 service record contains (among other things) a letter from presumably a brother, J H MCGOWEN, a licenced surveyor, mentioning that his parents had both recently passed away. The letter was written June 1922. So one brother must have survived the war (if indeed he fought in it). I will keep looking for other MCGOWENs - meantime you might like to look through the records at the NAA for yourself:
www.naa.gov.au
Log into Recordsearch as a Guest
Enter a name and in "Reference numbers" put in B2455 (WW1 AIF files). They are all digitised :)
Prue
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Hi Prue,
Many thanks for the info, - Much appreciated!!
I will definately check out that site.
Cheers, Romilly.
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Hi Again,
I'm having trouble with the Australian Site, - what I am trying to find out is if any of the McGowen brothers were on leave in the UK during Oct/Nov 1917...
Can anyone see any info about that please?
Cheers, Romilly.
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Hi Romilly,
You would first have to find the service record of the person you want to find out about, by searching Recordsearch as suggested above...then, view the digital image by clicking on the logo. Go page by page through the digital images and you will find information about the person's movements on a form in the file. I have copied a bit of Frank Noel MCGOWEN's form so you can see what they look like...Frank never made it to England on leave, looks like he went straight into his unit and stayed there until he was wounded and died in hospital, poor fellow :'(
Prue
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On the CWGC site there are two Australian MACGOWAN brothers. There are also some British McGowens and, of course, the Australian McGowen you mentioned died 1915.
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Many thanks for the replies, - I will carry on looking.
Cheers, Romilly.
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Does anyone on here know...
Is it possible to download Service Records as PDF's from the Australian Archives Site?
I've found Joseph Henry McGowen, - but I can't seem to save his record:-(
Romilly.
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Hi Romilly,
No, you can't, is the short answer. To get a full copy you would have to contact the NAA and pay a charge to get it on disk and/or a hard copy printout.
You can save the pages one by one to your computer - instructions are here: http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/Help/HelpImagine.htm
Prue
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Thanks for that Prue.
It is an amazing achievement to digitalise those records and put them on-line, - and so I shall just have to put up with the long winded method of downloading them!
And after all... the WW1 soldier that I was looking for didn't die in the conflict. There was a far more prosaic reason for his vanishing... he was already married, and returned to his wife in Australia in 1919.
Many thanks for the help,
Romilly.
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Ah! Well, he wouldn't be the only one. We were just talking in the lab* the other day about a WW1 file with several letters from a young lady desperate to contact an already married soldier because she was having his child - they were never forwarded on to him :-\ :'( - and remembering others like it that we've seen over the years.
(*conservation lab at the NAA)
Once you have all the images downloaded there might be a way to turn them into contiguous pages of a PDF document - the Technical Help board boffins might know a way to do it :)
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Ah! Well, he wouldn't be the only one. We were just talking in the lab* the other day about a WW1 file with several letters from a young lady desperate to contact an already married soldier because she was having his child - they were never forwarded on to him :-\ :'( - and remembering others like it that we've seen over the years.
(*conservation lab at the NAA)
Once you have all the images downloaded there might be a way to turn them into contiguous pages of a PDF document - the Technical Help board boffins might know a way to do it :)
I can't help wondering how horrified some of them would have been at the thought of all their info been digitalised and available on-line!! (Disappearing back to Oz after WW1 must have been the 21st Century equivalent of taking off to the dark side of the moon:-)
Romilly :)
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I'm just re-visiting this research after DNA Testing, - and am again trying to access the WW1 Record for Joseph Henry McGowen. I'm not having any success, can anyone on here please point me in the right direction please?
Cheers, Romilly.
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Assume you are using this link to his service record: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=1944654&isAv=N
So right click on Page 1, scroll down to "save image as" and it will save as a jpeg file in My Documents.
You can then do page 2,3, etc. Open in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Then you can look at his record sequentially.
Other option is to print each page, but as some are blank or repeated you could select the ones you want.
shume australia
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Assume you are using this link to his service record: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=1944654&isAv=N
So right click on Page 1, scroll down to "save image as" and it will save as a jpeg file in My Documents.
You can then do page 2,3, etc. Open in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Then you can look at his record sequentially.
Other option is to print each page, but as some are blank or repeated you could select the ones you want.
shume australia
Sessions expire on NAA and and the link on shume's post has timed out so I suggest you do the following
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/search/index.aspx
> Use Records Search to search our collection
> Enter his name in the Keywords and search
> Click on Digitised Item and then right click on each page and save.
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Many thanks shume and cando.
Yes, I was looking for a Service Record, - to confirm that this soldier was in the UK during the right time period. Service Record now found. I'm still trying to work out where he was 9 months before August 1918(!)
I can't make out what the last Entry at the end of the page is? Can anyone on here read it please?
Cheers, Romilly.
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"Struck off strength 28/2/1919 Anchises ( prob name of troop ship) ex England to ? Melbourne "
shume
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Many thanks for explaining shume.
I was struggling to understand what that meant.
Cheers, Romilly.