The King's Regiment (Men-at-Arms)

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I now had a list of 131 men who had been allocated numbers in the Kings Liverpool Regt. around that of my father - and I knew their names, their regiments, and their service numbers - all the information needed to begin the search for service records. Like most of the men who took part in WW1, my father was reluctant to talk about it, but when I was a young lad, maybe around 13 years old, he took me to see the film "All Quiet on the Western Front". It was unusual, "going to the pictures" was normally a family outing at that time but this was different - the only time my Dad and I went on our own and it made a big impression on me, as I guess he intended. Even now, over 60 years later, I still remember where we sat in Wallasey’s "Capitol" cinema and images from the film are burned into my memory, especially the final butterfly scene. In two days they drove forward two miles, and the war diary records that the advance continued throughout the month with strong enemy positions being overcome at Meault and Mametz. The end of August saw the battalion at Maurepas having covered a distance of about 10 miles in 23 days. The 12th (Eastern) Division was relieved by the 27th American Division and the next day they left the Somme front and began the 25 mile journey north towards Arras to occupy a trench line between Lens and Oppy, and I think it likely that it was at this point, whilst they were regrouping for the final advance, that my Dad re-joined the Battalion. The usual working parties. Two shells fell among 'C' Coy as they were moving off to work. Sec Lieut Ball was wounded. 7 OR killed and 23 wounded some of them seriously."

Transferred to the Royal Engineers, becoming the 38th (The King's Regiment) Anti-Aircraft Battalion, 1936, later 38th (The King's Regiment) Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery [1] At this point, although the Norfolk numerical sequence was complete, the alphabetic name sequence was not - there were no A, B or Y surnames - and it seemed logical that there should have been some. This was where the "Rosetta Stone" effect came to the fore, because although the Norfolk sequence had run out, I was now able to use the deduced Kings Liverpool numerical sequence to move the investigation forward and complete the alphabetic name series.Keith told me that although his family lived in Clitheroe, his mother came from Staffordshire, and on visits to her family when he was a boy, they would drive past Prees Heath camp, at which point his father would talk about his army experiences. The family also spent a number of holidays in Conway, North Wales, which meant driving past Kinmel Park camp near Rhyl and these journeys too triggered memories. It seems his father Herbert was a close friend of 49023 Hanson Farrar who died at Courcelles on 18th Oct. 1918 and for many years he kept in touch with Farrar's parents, George & Mary. The symmetry of it all so intrigued me that I temporarily set aside my original objective of finding service records to dig deeper into these name and number sequences, simply to see where they would lead me.

Retained, though it became a "line infantry" battalion when its rifle distinctions were relinquished in 1937 [1] On the walk home in the damp, gas-lit winter dark he said simply "It was just like that", and after a pause he recounted an incident from his own war. In retrospect, I now realise he was telling me how, at the age of 18, he was suddenly made acutely aware of how thin the margin between life and death had become. It is however possible to make a crude estimate of the unrecorded casualties by using the Commonwealth War Graves Commission details of those who lost their lives.

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xvii] The abbreviation GSW came to be used to describe not only bullet wounds but also penetrating wounds from shrapnel or shell fragments. It's possible that this wound was caused by a fragment of the exploding shell itself. vii] There are a number of providers of service record digital images. Ancestry and Find My Past are probably the most common.

To focus my search, I concentrated on the Norfolk squad of 100, because my father was number 85 in that group, and I began the search with the fourteen names above him - it yielded two service records. Then I started investigating names from 84 downwards - and by the time I'd done seven searches there were another two records. After that however, there was a long barren period when no new records came to light. I became a little disheartened and decided to analyse the four records I'd already uncovered before completing the remaining searches. xxiv] It has been estimated that the world-wide death toll of the flu pandemic was between 50 and 100 million. Prior to the firefighters' strikes of 2003, the regiment received basic firefighting training to provide emergency cover. The battalion operated in the Greater Manchester area during the strikes as part of Operation Fresco. It was known by a succession of colonels' names until 1751 when it was designated the 8th (The King's) Regiment of Foot. At this time it was formally awarded the White Horse of Hanover as a regimental device. In 1874 the Regiment adopted a badge comprising a figure 8, above which the prancing horse of Hanover, all within a belt circlet inscribed KING'S REGIMENT, surmounted by a crown. The database is only available for use by the 'Expert' and the Liverpool Museum people who will pass on the information to those members of the public who turn up.

At the end of the war the 42nd CCS was a tented hospital located in the northern outskirts of Douai beside the road to Lens (see Figure 23). At that time their main activity was treating influenza cases - in the month of November 1918 they took in 1144 cases of which 60 proved fatal (5.2%). Herbert Marshall's were stamped "L' POOL. R." with his Liverpool Regt no. "95990" while Robbie Robinson's were marked "NORF. R." with his Norfolk Regt no. "49085". Some of you may be familiar with the story of the regimental plaque made in Hong Kong which carries the names of seven of our Kingsmen killed in Northern Ireland in 1972. My Dad once said that they were sometimes greeted with a bleating "Baa,aa,aa..." sound from seasoned troops, meaning "Here come more lambs to the slaughter", as they passed by with their fresh faces, unsoiled uniforms, and obviously new equipment. Such sights and sounds were to become commonplace as the days went by however - it has been estimated that half the British Army in the latter half of 1918 was made up of young lads of 19 years or less. My Dad celebrated his 19th birthday in a frontline trench in Aveluy Wood, just north of Albert, relatively undisturbed. The war diary for 30th June 1918 reads :-

xv]The Great War Forum is a freely available resource having tens of thousands of members worldwide covering a wide spectrum of interests centred on WW1. Its purpose is to share knowledge. Effectively disbanded in August 1944; [20] officially placed in "suspended animation" on 22 November 1944; reconstituted on 1 January 1947 as 626th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, RA [1] [3]Figure 14: The 7th Norfolk diary entry for April 10th written at Hénencourt, and amended later that evening.