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General => Armed Forces => World War One => Topic started by: Walter Stevens on Wednesday 03 October 18 17:29 BST (UK)
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Firstly, I'm not from the UK and have only a limited knowledge of the entire Irish question, so apologies if I sound as ignorant as I am!
My grandfather Walter Bolus was born in England in 1898 and returned there and applied to join the RFC but was turned down due to color blindness. He subsequently joined King Edward's Horse (Im not sure which Regiment or Squadron) as a 2nd Lt and was trained at The Curragh near Dublin. He eventually saw service in France but before that was posted to Ireland where he commanded a firing squad. The sequence of joining the regiment or qualifying as a 2nd Lt first is something I'm not certain of. Neither Regiment lists deployment to Ireland amongst its deployments. I'm aware of some strife with Ireland at the time (around 1916) but does anyone have any ideas about how I could find out more?
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Some info here http://kingedwardshorse.net/ and you will find more on https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/ including a great war forum which includes Q/A about King Edwards Horse in Dublin
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There might be information in
http://lib.militaryarchive.co.uk/library/Cavalry-Yeomanry-Histories/History-King-Edwards-horse-Kings-OverseaDominionsReg.asp
It has a search option which, if you type in "bolus" shows a couple of entries.
Philip
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The Irish times ( in their culture tab) wrote a series of reports about the Easter Rising of 1916... this is the first one https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/easter-rising-day-1-rebels-on-the-streets-1.2575678 and RTE ( Irish TV) also has more on it https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/chronology-of-the-easter-rising
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Thanks for this background it's most useful. Although my grandfather was raised Catholic and there is a sizable Irish strain to us, as an Anglophile he was shattered by the experience and the hatred of the Irish towards the English. He dropped his Catholic faith immediately. Ironically he was taken prisoner blindfolded and almost executed during another rebellion, this time by miners in Johannesburg in 1922!
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Officers' service records are at National Archives. They have not been digitised so , as you may be unable to visit, you could ask for a quotation for making a copy. There is a non refundable fee of £8.40 to check the record and produce a quote. Here is a link to the entry for Walter Bolus :
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1178150
( I think the cost may be quite high so brace yourself ! )
There is an entry in the London Gazette :
11 March 1918 WAr Office :
Special Reserve of Officers
The undermentioned from an Officer Cadet Unit to be 2nd Lts 23 Feb 1918
King Edward's Horse
Walter Bolus
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Thanks for this. Sometimes I think commercialisation has gone too far It feels pretty strange that in order for a British taxpayer to access the online military records of his ancestors, he is required to pay across to Ancestory!
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This is OCR
BOLUS, GiLLHAM, of Maldivia, Wynberg, Cape Colony, and of the City, and Civil Service
Clubs (C.T.), and the Rand Club, is eldest son of Walter Bolus, of Boiu-nemouth, Hants. He
was bom at Fort Elizabeth, Oct 11, 18G3, and was educated at King's Sch., Canterbury.
He married, July 23, 1889, Maud Constance, 4th dau. of Arthur Gates, J. P. for Cape Colony.
https://archive.org/stream/angloafricanwhos00will/angloafricanwhos00will_djvu.txt
Yours??
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Yes he is thanks. He's an uncle of the Walter Bolus I'm referring to.
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There are several records in Ancestry for Walter Bolus. He Served initially as a private in King Edwards Horse, serving in France from June 1916. He was later commissioned as an Officer on 22/02/1918.
As regards service in Ireland, units of the KEH was involved in the fighting in Dublin in the April 1916 rebellion. Some of his comrades were killed in action. As he was a private in 1916, he would not have been in charge of the execution but would have been part of the firing party - doing the shooting.
Within the firing party, some of the rifiles were loaded with blanks instead of real bullets. The theory being no one would know if they fired a fatal shot or not.
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Searching the CWGC website, you will see 3 KEH men were killed in Dublin 1916. All from the 2nd battalion KEH and most likely your ancestor's unit.
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Thanks to all for the responses. I had heard that he had maimly served as (I think) the equivalent of a Company Sergeant Major.
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The responses so far have squeezed as much as can be obtained from on line records (and yes we also wish our archives were free to all like others!).
Without his record, which would include both his other rank and officer service, we don't know which element(s) of KEH he served with (although the deaths of three 2 KEH men in Ireland that Jervis42 cites does indeed suggest that was his unit at that time at least). The regiment has a complicated war history as you will have seen for the site that iluleah cited.
This National Archives link shows the war diaries and also illustrates that the regiments operated by squadron attached to different divisions at different times:
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_aq=king%20edwards%20horse&_cr=WO%2095&_dss=range&_ro=any&_p=1900&_st=adv
(Part of one of the war diaries for 2 KEH in 1915 (before he was overseas) is in the Canadian Archives (access free) because they were attached at the time to the Canadian Corps).
Thus we don't know which war diary to look at for the chance of his name appearing although, as his medal card shows that he didn’t serve overseas until Jun 1916 and 2 KEH was disbanded in August 1917, one or two could be discounted.
All that said, your interest in your man in the 1916 Ireland period is likely to be difficult, dare I say impossible, to pin down. His record will have nothing about it. Not from a secrecy point of view but as Ireland was part of UK at the time, his time in service up to when he went to France in Jun 16 will simply be covered by a heading “UK date from/ to”
You would be best advised to seek out more general sources rather than an individual’s service record. Philip has pointed you to “The history of King Edward’s Horse (The King’s Overseas Dominions Regiment)” edited by Lieut-Col. Lionel James (London: Sifton, Praed & Co., 1921). I have seen discussion about the composition of the firing squad that executed the leaders of the uprising over 9 days in May 1916. The book “The Easter Uprising” by Foy and Barton records that the squads were found by the 59th Division stationed in Ireland at the time and the weight of research indicates that they were from the Sherwood Foresters. As Jervis42 has pointed out, he was not commissioned until almost 2 years later so he would not have commanded a firing squad and, while he was in Ireland at the time, I would be sceptical about him taking part without contemporary evidence.
MaxD
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Thanks Maxd, I concur with your thinking. I may do a bit more digging but I think I'll move on to his WWII career in the South African Artillery in North Africa. Amazing how much conflict a person who was not particularly keen on the military could get into in one lifetime! He was even blindfolded and nearly executed during a rebellion on the Witwatersrand between the 2 World Wars...
Seriously though, he was born of a family that had maintained strong English ties and he was a committed to the relationship with Britain, despite it becoming increasing unpopular in South Africa. He refused to buy German or Japanese cars his whole life, and was very negative about those peoples in the abstract. On an individual level, however (for example with the local German parish priest) he could have a convivial conversation. His attitudes were common of a category of both English and Afrikaans speaking South Africans, but became a minority opinion.
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Good luck.
MaxD