West Riding Regiment H Turner

[DebbieLou]

Hello all,
I am trying to find out about my grandfather, Herbert Turner's service in the West Riding Regiment. (Identified from a cap badge on a photo). I cannot find his attestation papers. We believe he served in France in the trenches.

At some time (the end of the war?) he transferred to the 52nd Manchester Regiment and served with the army of occupation in Germany. His medal card is for the 52nd and his Regt number is 57993. I have downloaded the war diary for the 52nd, which includes a sports day programme!

Any advice on locating specific soldiers without their attestation papers would be gratefully received.

He was born in 1898.

[Jomot1]

Neither his medal index card nor the medal rolls themselves make any reference to a previous Regiment, and on the medal rolls there is a specific column for 'units and corps previously served with by each individual and Regtl No's therein... for any period in a theatre of War'. He also does not have a 1914/15 star, indicating that he did not serve abroad before 1916.

If he was previously in the West Riding Regiment then I can only think that it was one of the 'home' Battalions:
https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army...ding-regiment/

[DebbieLou]

Thank you Jom ot1. That's very useful information. I wonder if his time in the trenches was with the 52nd then?

[Jomot1]

I'm not sure where you're getting the 52nd from as the medal rolls show that he served with the 2nd Manchester Regiment.

The 2nd Battalion took in a large draft of men from England in Oct/Nov 1916 and again in early 1917, which would tie in with him not have served abroad before 1916. The link below shows the movements of the 2nd battalion:
https://www.themanchesters.org/2nd%20batt.htm

[DebbieLou]

Oh yes - I hadn't noticed - the 2nd then the 52nd! The 52nd comes from a notebook he had when serving in Germany. I'll follow up on the 2nd battalion. Thanks again!!

[Jomot1]

Sorry, I had visitors so had to go into the other room. You don't mention the dates he was in Germany, but the war diary for the 2nd Manchester Regiment shows they moved from Assesse, Belgium to Bonn, Germany at the beginning of February 1919. The diary entry for 17 March 1919 states 'Battalion is ordered to reduce to Cadre in readiness to proceed to United Kingdom. Retainable men and Volunteers to be split up amongst 51st, 52nd & 53rd Battns". The entry for 18th March states "7 Offs 86 ORs posted to 52nd Battn Manchester Regiment".

It therefore seems highly likely that Herbert was amongst the 86 Other Ranks who transferred to the 52nd Battalion on 18 Mar 1919. If he continued to serve after 1920 then his service record will still be with the MoD.

ADDED: If you have access to Ancestry the relevant page of the war diary is here:
www.ancestry.co.uk/interactive/60779/43849_2397_1-00090?pid=625943&usePUB=true&backurl=https%3A%2F%2[/url]
Fwww.ancestry.co.uk%2Fsearch%2Fcollections%2Fukwar diarieswwi%2F%3Fkeyword%3DWO95%2F2397%2F2#?imageId =43849_2397_2-00109

[Lesley Robertson]

The medal index cards do not give a complete list of which regiments or units someone served with, just what was known at the time the cards were made up. During WW1, men were moved between regiments depending on where manpower was short - I've seen men who'd been in a kilted scottish regiment and a southern english one, for example.

[Jomot1]

The medal index cards do not give a complete list of which regiments or units someone served with, just what was known at the time the cards were made up.

Hi Lesley - just wondering what your source is for this statement? Happy to be corrected, but my understanding is that the medal rolls were submitted by the various Army Records Offices to AG10 (War Office - Medal Branch) who created index cards and cross-referenced the information. Rather than regiments/units being omitted, it was more likely that there would be multiple submissions for the same man - ie a submission from each regiment or unit - and so the organisation of the Medal Rolls and the creation of the Index Cards was designed to eliminate this.

Both the war office and the army were keen to ensure that medals were not issued twice where a man had served in more than one regiment, so the cross-referencing of information & removal of duplications was a key element of the work of AG10.

An example of a duplicate submission is Joseph Murphy (West Riding Regiment) who is on the medal rolls under 4/620 and again under 260018, the latter then being crossed out. All information is then on a single Index card.

No system can be 100% accurate - especially a manual one - so there will certainly be certainly instances where a man has two index cards - one for each regiment served with, with no cross-reference to the other (and therefore two sets of medals issued), although I believe the error rate for this is thought to be pretty low.

It's therefore possible that there is a second Medal Card for Herbert under the West Riding Regiment, but as far as I can see there were only two – 7424 born 1883 Skipton & 260022 who was discharged to the reserves on 21 Mar 1919.

[DebbieLou]

Thanks again, that looks like it could be the route Herbert took from the 2nd to the 52nd. I can only get as far as the 31 Jan 1918 war diary for the 2nd battn on Ancestry. Your link takes me to the War Diaries page but nothing is actually shown!!

[Jomot1]

Hi, Sorry, I dont know what happened there - when I tested it last night there was no problem but its now marked "url to commercial site broken. copy paste into browser to use"

Rather than try again, here's how to find it:

From Ancestry card catalog select 'UK, WWI War Diaries (France, Belgium and Germany), 1914-1920'
On the menu to the right under Regiment or Unit select 'Various (Infantry Brigades, 32nd Division)' then '32nd Division' then Piece 2397: 96 Infantry Brigade (1915-1919) then Image 110 of 447

If you still cant bring it up, let me know.