Genealogy Chat

hi my ggrandfather served in france in ww1 he survived and came home! where and how can i find information as to where about in france he did duty and how long was he over there for! does your records only cover solders who died in war? there are so many sites out there all wanting money so please help!

Hi Wendy if you want to put the name on here and any details of DOB and location, I will have a look on Ancestry and see if any records there...eg attestation, pensions ...sometimes they give a lot of info re dates locations etc

samuel harry jones 1896
born bilston staffs
he served with the south staffs regiment!
i have his number off his medal if you need it thanks wendy

Please post his service # off medal - there's literally 100s of Samuel Jones's.

yes if you have the number it would help Wendy

45988

hope that helps

Bingo! I've got him

yes info please

Wendy, the images are not very clear but I can email them to you if you wish? If you click on my name and send a message with it in... just for confirmation wife Sarah?

yes please that would be great! do you have my email?

hi hope you got my email ok thanks again wendy

fantastic info thank you very much
wendy

my pleasure Wendy :)

Although your guy enlisted in Dec 1915, it seems he went into the reserves initially. Quite why, I don't know. I do know the overall management of manpower in the early war years can, at best, be described as shambolic. Anways, he was mobilized in May 1918 by which time he'd wed Sarah Elizabeth Bate. Upon mobilization, he was classed as A 1, but by the time he was posted to France, he'd gotten trench fever and was reclassified as II - fit for light duty, and he'd had his 1st daur - Sarah Elizabeth. (One can see the n.o.k change from John Jones to his wife, and the check she was his wife for war widow purposes - luckily unneeded.)

He was posted to 1/6 Bn S Staffs Regt 14/10/1918 and saw active service for the last month of the war, followed by occupation duty for another year before being demobbed.



Trench fever afflicted 25% of British army - it was not usually fatal, but was a fairly severe disease akin to a milder form of typhus, and like typhus, infection was by scratching infected lice droppings into the skin. Presumably, he got this in some UK barracks whilst on training.



What his unit did in the last month of the war would be recorded in the unit's War Diaries for Oct & Nov. I would imagine there's a copy at Kew, and maybe at the regimental museum, wherever that is.