RootsChat.Com
General => Armed Forces => World War One => Topic started by: StanleysChesterton on Sunday 02 April 17 21:34 BST (UK)
-
This is a cropped image of the medal card of a 2nd Battalion Highland Light Infantry private who had originally been part of the territorial army and I presume left that, but once WW1 started he signed up and trotted off to the Mons.
He was injured at some point, shipped home, recovered and shipped back in 1915.
I know he was at the Mons for sure - he even wrote a (missing) diary as I know his mother in law arranged a reading of it to local school children when he was waiting for another back operation in 1915 and it was in the newspapers. He was injured in the spine by shrapnel when he was bringing his commander back to the safety of the trench.
So, that's the background for any clue as to what these medals are - it's that handwritten part right before the Star that I need help deciphering.
Thanking you in anticipation.
-
Hi,
I believe it says 14, which would therefore mean that he was awarded the 1914 Star.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards
David
-
Hi,
I believe it says 14, which would therefore mean that he was awarded the 1914 Star.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards
David
Yes it does. Thank you :)
Every little scrap helps ..... this is my "disappearing grandfather ....." so keen to get any/all knowledge, no matter how small, into my knowledge bank for potential searches.
He lived.... at least another 20 years .... but I will probably never find out when/where he died, but that won't stop me continually looking for ideas/clues and avenues.
EDIT: I've looked into this more and it would appear that this is called the Mons Star - and I think that to get it he'd have had to have been fighting for the whole of the duration 5 August and 22 November 1914 .... which, if that's correct, would mean that he was injured after 22 November.
One piece of the puzzle I've got is that I know he was injured, I know what sort of injury, I know the hospitals in England he moved to, I know he then went back to the lines after a quickie marriage ... but I've no date of injury yet.
I can probably now narrow it down to between 22 November and the date when I know he was awaiting further surgery and his diary was read to local school children in mid February 1915.
-
You're right about the 1914 Star having the restrictions on the dates, and since you are positive that your soldier served at Mons then this would confirm the "14" beside the word 'Star'.
From Wikipedia: "The majority of recipients were officers and men of the pre-war British army, specifically the British Expeditionary Force, also known as the Old Contemptibles, who landed in France soon after the outbreak of the War and who took part in the Retreat from Mons, hence the medal's nickname "Mons Star".
The 1914 Star was never awarded singly. Recipients of this medal also received the British War Medal and Victory Medal, but did not qualify to also receive the very similar 1914–15 Star since no person could receive both Stars."
Also from Wikipedia: "The 1914–15 Star was instituted in December 1918 and was awarded to officers and men of British and Imperial forces who served against the Central European Powers in any theatre of the Great War between 5 August 1914 and 31 December 1915."
Just thought you might like to know the difference!
RRTB
-
You're right about the 1914 Star having the restrictions on the dates, and since you are positive that your soldier served at Mons then this would confirm the "14" beside the word 'Star'.
From Wikipedia: "The majority of recipients were officers and men of the pre-war British army, specifically the British Expeditionary Force, also known as the Old Contemptibles, who landed in France soon after the outbreak of the War and who took part in the Retreat from Mons, hence the medal's nickname "Mons Star".
The 1914 Star was never awarded singly. Recipients of this medal also received the British War Medal and Victory Medal, but did not qualify to also receive the very similar 1914–15 Star since no person could receive both Stars."
Also from Wikipedia: "The 1914–15 Star was instituted in December 1918 and was awarded to officers and men of British and Imperial forces who served against the Central European Powers in any theatre of the Great War between 5 August 1914 and 31 December 1915."
Just thought you might like to know the difference!
RRTB
Thanks. I know he was at Mons as I've got a court case printed in the newspaper that headlined as "Mons Man's Marriage" ... a separation order request in 1919.
Also, in February 1915, the reading of abstracts from his diaries to local school children reported in the paper that they were especially "rapt" at the stories of the Retreat.
-
The card and its associated Medal Roll entry yields lots more information.
It records the date he entered France 14 August 1914 which is the date the 2 HLI disembarked at Boulogne. It alao shows he returned his Victory medal in 1923, probably to get his initials properly engraved, there is a note suggesting that on the card.The roll shows he ended the war as a Lance Corporal and that when overseas he served throughout with 2 HLI.
Unfortunately, his service record has not survived the bombing in WW2 but you can download the war diary of the battalion from the National Archives here for £3.50 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7351969 . It is also on Ancestry if you have a sub. (Note the diary also has the Connaught Rangers at the start)
Just to clarify the dates. To qualify for the 1914 Star, he didn't have to have been present from one date to the other, it was sufficient to have been in the theatre of war at some time between the dates so linking the end date with when he was wounded doesn't work! However, while a war diary does not normally mention other ranks by name, if his wounding was occasioned during some rescue operation, then the diary may well mention it.
maxD
-
The three medals were known to many as "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" who were characters in a cartoon strip published in The Daily Mirror from 1919. The two medals without the 1914 star were known as "Mutt and Jeff".
-
The card and its associated Medal Roll entry yields lots more information.
It records the date he entered France 14 August 1914 which is the date the 2 HLI disembarked at Boulogne. It alao shows he returned his Victory medal in 1923, probably to get his initials properly engraved, there is a note suggesting that on the card. The roll shows he ended the war as a Lance Corporal and that when overseas he served throughout with 2 HLI.
Unfortunately, his service record has not survived the bombing in WW2 but you can download the war diary of the battalion from the National Archives here for £3.50 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7351969 . It is also on Ancestry if you have a sub. (Note the diary also has the Connaught Rangers at the start)
Just to clarify the dates. To qualify for the 1914 Star, he didn't have to have been present from one date to the other, it was sufficient to have been in the theatre of war at some time between the dates so linking the end date with when he was wounded doesn't work! However, while a war diary does not normally mention other ranks by name, if his wounding was occasioned during some rescue operation, then the diary may well mention it.
maxD
Thanks... that's more than I knew. Stuff's dotted all over the place. I don't know about "war stuff", so have avoided too much interaction with the detail to date, hoping what I'd need to know would "fall into my lap". I'm scraping round for clues really ...as I'm ultimately trying to find his death (post 1935), so clues as to "how to think" about where he could've ended up and when.
Re the initials - I suspect it wasn't just that he wanted his middle initial to be included on his medal, but that he had a brother whose first name also started with "A", so the family probably insisted on them all using all initials wherever possible to avoid confusion in post/documents.... just a guess. That seems the most likely reason why somebody would bother to send back a medal for an extra initial. It should, maybe, also help me track him down ultimately, if that insistence on always using it was used when he died... it narrows the list of possibles from '000s to just a few dozen :)
I'd been looking for the official diary, but hadn't worked out where to find it, so thanks for saying it's on the National Archives. I'll put that £3.50 down on the "list of stuff I'd like to get one day". It's a lot of money if there's nothing in there ... and even if there is it might work out at £1/word :)
And/or wait for a free ANC weekend that applies to the relevant document.
I managed to get from newspapers that he got his shrapnel wound at Mons carrying his captain to the trench, shrapnel was ¼ inch from his spine.
Skint, not tight :) Plus, there are so many documents one could buy you have to prioritise. So many "duds" one could buy ... you need to be assured you're buying the right things, for the right reason.
-
The three medals were known to many as "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" who were characters in a cartoon strip published in The Daily Mirror from 1919. The two medals without the 1914 star were known as "Mutt and Jeff".
I'd heard Pip/Squeak/Wilfred before - but not Mutt/Jeff!
-
It records the date he entered France 14 August 1914 which is the date the 2 HLI disembarked at Boulogne.
Working just on this fact from yourself, I can now use the snippets I've gathered elsewhere to see where he was likely to be as there are a lot of bits/bobs online about the group that landed on that date. Although I had him down as landed then, my notes always have to include the "I guessed" part :)
I know there was a big reception, then a toff visited, then they did training ... then marched to Belgium, arriving on 23rd August.
They had some friendly-fire from their own chaps on 8 September.
So, if I can just work out the date he "dipped out and got shipped off home", I could plot the whole route confidently + toss in bits and bobs from other diaries.
It's a shame his own written diary was lost over the years.... while there's a chance it might still reappear in the next X years, it could equally have ended up in a dustbin from 1920 to 1970!
From the newspaper reports of what was read out from his diary, he mentioned having to look for Germans in haystacks - and one shot at him, but missed, so my chap shot him dead (that's what he told the kids at the school anyway).
----
I then did a bit of digging to find any Captain names, first one that crops up is Whistler. He copped a shrapnel injury on 16 September, at Aisne, so that's on my list to investigate that incident further to see if "my chap" was injured on that date and if that were the relevant Captain.
But he was back in the field in 19 October, so it could have been a later date, or an interim captain.
-
As he was wounded there might be a pension record but I need his name & no.
-
As he was wounded there might be a pension record but I need his name & no.
8624, Morgan AE.
I'd assumed pensions were only for the dead/wives/children, so hadn't even considered those!
For reference:
At his injury date he was single.
He married and had a daughter in 1915.
He married the nurse he met while convalescing.
-
The war diary gives a good account, particularly of the first days. His initial experiences are better described as bing involved in the retreat from Mons. The battalion never actually reached Mons, they reached the village of Parturages to the south west of Mons after hard marching from the coast. Their first two weeks were, in summary:
Arrived in France 1400 14 August 1914.
Marched eastwards towards the enemy and reached the village of Paturages, south west of Mons and dug in around the village on 24 August at 0230.
Received their first taste of enemy shell fire later that early morning. 14 wounded. Received orders to retire at 0930.
Retired to the south arriving at St Quentin on 27 August at 2200 and Soissons at 1800 30 August.
This link
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/P%C3%A2turages,+Colfontaine,+Belgium/Pont-sur-Sambre,+France/Barzy-en-Thi%C3%A9rache,+France/Guise,+France/Soissons,+France/@49.8892333,3.036875,9z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m32!4m31!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c25a2acc35e499:0xbe6c10b5939384cb!2m2!1d3.8383261!2d50.4048263!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c266c28ec6fae9:0x40af13e81645c70!2m2!1d3.847567!2d50.222336!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c27dd4f786c277:0xcc5f3d60112fc46d!2m2!1d3.74862!2d50.042729!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e82b97168d34e9:0x40af13e8169e870!2m2!1d3.625057!2d49.898014!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e85eb79c9276c1:0x42a89b5db10348eb!2m2!1d3.32342!2d49.376636!3e2
is to a map which shows the route they took, 138km in 6 days, harried all the time by the advancing enemy. They crossed the Aisne on 31 August.
Later, the diary does record, on 17 September, the wounding of 2 Lt Whistler.
On 15 September, in heavy shelling, 60 other ranks were wounded. There were further casualties
on the 20th. As is normal, the names of the other ranks are not recorded. I fear it is unlikely that you will be able to pin - point the day he was wounded.
maxD
-
I fear it is unlikely that you will be able to pin - point the day he was wounded.
maxD
Thank you - you've saved me weeks/months of pointless googling and re-googling various permutations of words that might yield a glimmer of a clue :)
That's great... I had wondered if he'd missed the Mons and just got into the retreat bit.
I'm not war-savvy, having never been interested in even watching war films! I thought I had nobody in WW1 until I started doing all this family history stuff and they're dotted all over the tree.
In WW1 this soldier lost two brothers and a cousin. If he'd met with the same fate I'd not be here typing this!
When I started my journey all I had were some remembered small snippets that this man existed - mum was born and he left the country. First of all I had to get a full name and then build up the whole family and it all matched with the snippets I'd been fed... so it's definitely the right chap. So then I thought I needed to find out more - and he just "disappeared" until enough records or clues come my way over the coming years for me to finally work out when/where he died.
I felt lucky to get a name to the dirty deed .... and then to get so much from the newspapers that were an exact match to what I'd been told about him .... it seems a shame to hit a dead end... so then I thought I'd find out more about "the war stuff" as I couldn't go foward to discover his end point, I might as well try to delve deeper ... but I was out of my depth.
New Research:
The trouble is - with everything new you learn, something new lands in your lap that needs looking at. So I looked at his brother's Medal Card - and he, too, has the same set of three medals AND the clasp. His brother was in a different regiment, joined 8 August and was Killed in Action on 20 April 1915.
It's never ending isn't it!
-
Isn't it awesome that every family was directly affected by the terrible consequences of industrial warfare. Once they were just names on a war memorial and now it's so much more personal.
-
Times casualty lists dated 11 11 1914.
List of men admitted to No 1 Eastern General Hospital,Cambridge 1 10 1914 includes Morgan 8624 A, Highland L I.
-
Isn't it awesome that every family was directly affected by the terrible consequences of industrial warfare. Once they were just names on a war memorial and now it's so much more personal.
Yeah. Growing up, old soldiers were "just old blokes in caps" ....
I never knew anybody who was in WW1... at all. None. Mum never dragged us kicking and screaming to any poppy parades - although she'd always watch it on the telly at home.
As for WW2, to be honest, that's a complete mystery too - it's so hard to get the information, there's no handy "look up list" to see if anybody whose name you know was in it ... my sibling said she thought that "granddad" had been hurt in some way in WW2, but we've no idea how/where etc etc... it's all a big mystery. I've photos of mum's uncle in a uniform - no idea what he did either. I've some random photos of young blokes during the wartime, mum couldn't remember who they were... bound to be relevant friends/family... although one's a group of lads diving in the sea (presumably on location) so only one of those is likely to be known to her and the rest were his regimental mates.
-
Times casualty lists dated 11 11 1914.
List of men admitted to No 1 Eastern General Hospital,Cambridge 1 10 1914 includes Morgan 8624 A, Highland L I.
Cheers! I've never heard of the Times casualty lists before ...
Who'd have thought there was such a thing.
I knew that's the Hospital he'd been at, just not the dates. After that, in February, he went to Hospital in Scotland for a bigger operation.... then back to war.
1 October is making my guess of injury on 16 September look a bit likely as it'd have taken awhile to get him into a bed and decided what to do with him, then shipped off and back ... and 2 weeks sounds about right to me (purely guessing, of course, like I do).
Thanks for taking the time to look and report back!
*dances* New information! :)
I just don't like "to bother people" by asking for lookups etc and milking their kindness. So I rarely ask for things.
-
SC, this is one site where "I just don't like "to bother people" by asking for lookups etc and milking their kindness. So I rarely ask for things" certainly doesn't apply! So ask away. :)
RRTB
-
You refer in an earlier post to WW2 being a mystery. While it is true that there is no "look up list" (just under 3 million men and women by the end of the war would be some list!!) the task is not always impossible.
You refer also in your profile to looking for Sgt Bennett, presumably a WW2 man. Despite what some web sites would have you believe, all post 1920 service records are still held by relevant branches of the MOD and can, subject to certain conditions, be applied for. It does cost but is the only way to get such records and the amount of information to be supplied is relatively small. The procedure is described here https://www.gov.uk/get-copy-military-service-records/overview. Worth reviewing what you have and,as RRTB says, the very aim of Rootschat is to help folk with queries.
maxD
-
.... still held by relevant branches of the MOD and can, subject to certain conditions, be applied for.
I did look into it and it got complex. So I was waiting until 100 years after birth, another 3-4 years.
From memory I think it was "100 years since birth - or after they're dead, which you have to prove". Or you have to be next of kin/similar.
Trouble is - I wanted the information to find out WHEN he died, so I can't tell them when he died - and I am not the next of kin either.
:)
So they made it impossible for "A person to get the records of somebody who was born less than 100 years ago".
I just checked your link, overview says one of two instances:
1] They are YOUR records. Well, they're not mine.
2] Records of somebody who is deceased - they do appear to have changed the wording now to be inclusive as they say "or you are researching them" - they didn't say that before I don't think
Then you think "oh I'm researching" and click through ... and it gets harder. I do have permission of "immediate next of kin", but would then need that in writing I guess, so another step. I've just had the OK over the phone about a year ago. "Yeah, you can do it if you want, I won't bother".
You also need to know their full date of birth - that's one of the things I was hoping to get from the records.
All I have at the moment is: first/last name (no middle name exists to my knowledge, age 33 in early 1952. Father's first name (and last, presumably), but it's a common name. Service number and base given as an address in 1952.