The Royal Engineers = R.E. wasn't a regiment in the way that an infantry or cavalry regiment was.
It was a Corps, ( pronounced as core ), a Corps can also mean a large subdivision of an army.
In the case of the R.E. it means a separate organisation with specialist skills and duties.
The R.E. laid cables, dug tunnels, built roads, operated water transport, did a whole range of mechanical and constructional tasks, by the end of the war there were nearly 300,000 men in the R.E..
A Private in the R.E. is called a Sapper from an old fashioned word which means to dig, a sap is also another name for a trench or a tunnel.
The R.E. would have operated in separate self contained units, but many of those units would have been attached to, or worked in conjunction with, other army units, such as infantry or artillery units.
http://www.1914-1918.net/cre.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapperhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnelling_companies_of_the_Royal_Engineershttp://www.re-museum.co.uk/research/family_history/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_EngineersI'll get back to you about Frank and the others, this is Frank's medal record card below, some of his service documents have also survived so I know this is the same person as the man on the census.
Ah,
Sapper, ( Spr.), Frank Denton has two service numbers
522782 in the
R.E. and he must also have been in the
Territorial unit of the
R.E. before WW1 because he also has a number
3319 in the
R.E. (T)He has the
British War Medal and the
Allied Victory Medal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_campaign_medals#World_War_II don't suppose that the medals of your maternal grandfather,
Albert Denton, are still in the possession of the family, if they were, they would tell you his rank, service number, and unit.
Right click on the document pictures and then select open image or whatever equivalent command your browser uses, in order to display the image separately in full screen.
Right click on the document pictures and select the appropriate browser command in order to download and save them in picture format.
I was about to give you some more info on this, but thanks to the self appointed sheriff below and the rottweiler moderators on here, I'm gone, permanently, good luck with your search, oh and btw, mum was right about Harold.
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