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General => Armed Forces => World War Two => Topic started by: Elastik on Saturday 21 September 24 01:25 BST (UK)
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I just received my Uncle Frank's WW2 records from the MoD Team at the National Archives. There are 36 pages & a lot of detail, even dentistry records. Sadly I can only understand about 30% of it since I am not familiar with the abbreviations & acronyms used. He appeared to be in the Royal West Kent Regiment. Family members say that he was evacuated from Dunkirk but the dates don't look right to me & also that he served as a batman for an officer who was shot, in an attack, in front of him. I can't really get anywhere with these questions. There seems to be no mentions of duty as a batman but maybe this was not an "official" Army role. I'd appreciate some advice on the status of batmen & common abbreviation & terms eg. "posted". What does "posted" mean? I'm happy to post the images providing I can meet the file size requirements. Thanks for any help.
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No, official records won't usually record appointments like batman because they were internal to the regiment he was serving in. As for the abbreviations and terminology you don't understand, please feel free to post images of any entries which are giving you trouble and we will attempt to tanslate. 'Posted' in the case of an Infantry soldier means transferred to a job/appointment outside his normal unit. So for instance he would have been initially posted somewhere to undergo his recruit training, and later might have posted to a centre for demobilisation.
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A Batman would care for his Commissioned Officer’s uniform etc mucin the same way as a Valet would for his employer in civilian life.. He would run his errands and do the jobs that an ordinary serviceman would have to do for himself. In Other words he was a general dogsbody. If you Google Batman you should find plenty of information.
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Thanks, I'll abandon the search for his work as a batman. On the attached sheet (13 of 36) there is a stamp which says "Evacuated From France", The date on the left is 24th June & on the right looks like 7th June. Both of these are too late for Dunkirk but it has been suggested it might have been Operation Aerial. How does this sound? It looks like he was next at the Isle of Wight where he was granted leave, maybe this is where the boat first docked.
On the line dated 11/10/40 it looks like it says "Posted to 8/RWK and struck off strength." Anyone know what "struck off strength" means?
2 lines bellow this it looks like he was sent to Maidstone and somewhere that looks like "Brasted". Is this an army camp?
On the line dated 4/3/41 just below it seems to say he was "Granted add pay 3d per diem as "something" cook". Any idea what the "something" is?
In terms of initials -
On the line dated 30/4/40 "RASC" - RASC?
On the line dated 13/3/41 "Granted WPP....." -WPP?
On the line dated 10/4/41 "Ceased to be attached to ITC Maidstone" -ITC?
I think I've bitten off more than I can chew here. Thanks for any assistance.
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He was with the 1 Battalion Royal West Kent’s, posted means he was sent to another Battalion or Unit, in fact he went to the 8 Battalion Royal West Kents
Struck off strength means he was no longer counted as in the old unit he would now be included in the new unit.
RASC is the Royal Army Service Corps.
I believe the ITC was the Intelligence Corps.
Men were moved around as and where they were needed. As your man trained as a cook he was most likely to have ended up attached to various units during hi service.
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I.T.C. Infantry Training Centre
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Brasted, Kent.
A website claims Brasted to be the base of 8 Royal West Kent Regiment in 1940. (However, their War Diary has not been seen and information is unconfirmed).
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As promised, here is my explanation of the entries in his service record.
The entry for 7 Jun 1940 seems to be the date he actually arrived back in the UK, so is consistent with him being evacuated on 6th June, technically the last day of Operation Dynamo (the evacuation of Dunkirk). As far as I am aware the RWK left France via Dunkirk, although they lost about 200 men who were either killed or taken prisoner.
Once back in Britain the battalion was assigned to home defence duties on the South Coast, and your man would have spent most of the rest of 1940 getting bored, until October when he was posted to the 8th Battalion RWK. This was a Home Defence Battalion of the Territorial Army and was largely made up of older soldiers who were perhaps past their prime when it came to fighting overseas, as well as the young recruits who could not yet be sent overseas. This was a posting because he permanently left his original unit (1 RWK) and went to join the 8th Battalion. The terminology used is that he was struck off the strength (SOS) of 1 RWK and taken on the strength (TOS) of 8 RWK.
Then within 4 months he was on attachment to the Infantry Training Centre Maidstone. 'Attached' means that he remained on the strength of 8 RWK even though he was employed somewhere else temporarily. There is something of a mystery about this attachment. The RWK's home depot was at Invicta Barracks in Maidstone and this was also the home of No 13 Infantry Training Centre, so that is quite logical. However, the mention of Brasted does not fit with this. Brasted is in North West Kent close to RAF Biggin Hill, and as far as I am aware there was never an ITC there. What I think this means is that the 8th Battalion was at Brasted (as BushInn mentions), and the ITC where he was attached was at Maidstone. Anyway, at least we know why he was there. He was learning to be a cook. The word before Cook is Learner. He then returns to 8 RWK and later qualifies as a Class 2 (Class II) cook.
Then in October 1941 he is transferred yet again, this time to 294 Company Pioneer Corps at Chattenden Barracks in North Kent. The Pioneers had been formed during WW1 but were disbanded in 1919, only to be reformed as the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (AMPC) in 1939. In 1940 they were renamed the Pioneer Corps, and much later on became the Royal Pioneer Corps. They provided largely unskilled labour who assisted in particular the Royal Engineers, Royal Artillery and Royal Army Ordnance Corps. Chattenden Barracks was also home to both the Royal Engineers and a large Ordnance Depot storing munitions. Given that you man had qualified as Class II cook, that is probably how he was employed in 294 Company.
The last entry on the page, which has been cancelled, indicates that he was granted leave from 29.11.41 to 5.12 [41]. The location seems to be Milford Haven, but given that the entry was cancelled, it may have been entered in error on the wrong record sheet.
I hope this clarifies things a bit
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Two follow up points.
You originally asked about Batmen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(military)). Although not an official appointment, the employment of batmen was authorised but the soldier concerned had to be willing to do the job. The officer concerned would be responsible for paying the batman for his extra duties at the going rate within the unit (a batman would not get rich on this!).
Secondly, you asked what the abbreviation WPP stood for. I don't know but I suspect it was something to do with qualifying for a War Pension.
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Secondly, you asked what the abbreviation WPP stood for. I don't know but I suspect it was something to do with qualifying for a War Pension.
I don't know either, but there's an alternate suggestion here:
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=526056.0
Boo
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Secondly, you asked what the abbreviation WPP stood for. I don't know but I suspect it was something to do with qualifying for a War Pension.
I don't know either, but there's an alternate suggestion here:
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=526056.0
Boo
Thanks for the suggestion Boo.
As I said I don't know for certain what WPP stands for, but I do doubt Plummiegirl's suggestion. Firstly, in the example she is talking about, the previous entry refers to Privilege Leave (the normal term for this type of leave). A weekend pass might well be deducted from a soldier's annual priv leave, but frequently isn't; a group of soldiers might be granted informal leave over a weekend from after the last parade on a Friday, provided that they were back in barracks for the first parade on the following Monday. I have never heard the expression Weekend Privilege Pass.
My second reason for doubting the explanation in the present thread is that 1.1.41 was a Wednesday, so if that was the date from which the WPP was effective, it couldn't have been a weekend pass.
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Great! Thanks very much for all the feedback, the records are starting to make much more sense. It looks like Uncle Frank had a long and varied army career. He seems to have joined up in 1931 for 7 years & then 5 years in Reserve. This is made clear on the first attachment (page 1 of 36). He was 19 & it could be that his decision was economic since there was no work in 1931 & the country wasn't at war at that time. Looking at annual reports from his first 7 years I found the word "batman" mentioned a couple of times in Sept 1932 & 33. I've underlined these in red on the second attachment (page 26 of 36). This is a stroke of blind luck, I cannot see a way to find out which officer he served. So it seems that he was in the Reserve in 1939, maybe, when war was declared and he re-entered the army.
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Family members say that Frank witnessed the death of the officer for whom he was a batman. If he had this role in 1932/3 there were no hostilities at that time so I can't see how it would have happened then. Maybe it happened when he was part of the BEF from Oct '39 to June '40 in France, otherwise he seems to have been in the UK. The attached record (8 of 36) says he was transferred to the Pioneer Corps in Oct 1941 and a few lines below (dated 27/11/43) it seems to say "Disenfranchised in BNAF" which I think is British North Africa Forces. However I can't see any details of where he might have been sent as part of the Pioneer Corps. Were they in North Africa?
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The Officer May have been killed in an accident, possibly connected to something he was working on, not necessarily through hostilities.
The Pioneer Corps were involved in sorts of things like the Royal Engineers. Track laying, Engineering mine clearance etc.
I think you are misreading the word, it is Disembarked. Not disenfranchised.
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Quite a few things to pick out here. Firstly, confirmation of my earlier supposition that he was employed as cook with the Pioneer Corps. Then on 31 Oct 1942 he actually transferred to the Army Catering Corps. This Corps had been formed from March 1941, by gradually transferring all the regimental cooks into a single corps. The aim was the improve professional standards and allow greater flexibility in the deployment of cooks.
There is nothing to indicate that he continued to serve In a Pioneer Corps unit after re-badging to ACC. But equally there nothing to show he joined new unit. He is shown as proceeding overseas to BNAF in draft RVGZF, the code which signifies the convoy used to transport him. This convoy left the UK on 12 Nov 1943 and as Jebber has noted, they disembarked on 27 Nov 1943. The BNAF was the British component of the Allied forces in Morocco and Algiers (as distinct from the Eighth Army which was in Egypt then Libya and was moving Westwards towards Algeria in pursuit of the retreating Germans and Italians).
There would certainly have been large numbers of Pioneer Corps soldiers with the BNAF involved in offloading the huge quantities of stores, ammunition and fuel required to support the British effort in BNAF and for building a stockpile to reinforce the Eighth Army as they drew closer.
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With regard to where his officer was killed, I would say this is more likely to have been during the Battle of France or the retreat to Dunkirk, than any other time. The RWK lost about two hundred officers and men in Belgium in early 1940. The unit war diaries for the period have not been digitised so you would need to visit TNA at Kew to see them, or get someone to look for you. They will undoubtedly record any officer deaths, although your man is unlikely to get a mention unless he did something special at the time (for instance administering first aid or getting the officer to the Regimental Aid Post etc).
Details of the relevant war diaries:
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C163234
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C790697
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Two follow up points.
You originally asked about Batmen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(military)). Although not an official appointment, the employment of batmen was authorised but the soldier concerned had to be willing to do the job. The officer concerned would be responsible for paying the batman for his extra duties at the going rate within the unit (a batman would not get rich on this!).
Secondly, you asked what the abbreviation WPP stood for. I don't know but I suspect it was something to do with qualifying for a War Pension.
Pay
I think W.P.P. will be to do with pay rates.
I have been looking up my 1942 King's Regulations of the RAF and they have several types of Pay and different Pay Status, with their own RAF names for it.
At one point I see this Serviceman was CTBA Ceased to be Attached.
The Army probably also had basic or a base pay.
Once they went to a Unit and/or go to Defensive / Fighting duty status they would get War Pay (depending upon their terms of engagement in the Army).
I see particular Royal Artillery personnel getting Granted WPP (elsewhere) when posted to an LAA Regt (Light Anti-Aircraft Regt) so the personnel are engaged to fight or provide defensive measures.
Granted W.P.P. / Granted WPP
Granted War Proficiency Pay
alias
Granted War-time Proficiency Pay
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1941/may/27/war-time-proficiency-pay
Mark
Added: Not on this list, but I did find this list of Abbreviations & Acronyms
Though not affiliated with The National Archives, the independent Researching the Lives and Records of WW2 Soldiers website also contains a very useful list of Second World War abbreviations and acronyms
https://www.researchingww2.co.uk/ww2-abbreviations-acronyms/
In a link from Section 3 on here ...
3. Abbreviations and acronyms used in the records
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/british-army-soldiers-in-service-after-1918/
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Thanks for that Mark.
I think that is the correct explanation for WPP.
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Again I am extremely grateful for all the knowledge posters have shared with me. It's making the record much more personal. The mysterious "RVGZF" is mentioned again here with reference to his posting to BNAF, maybe it was the convoy. Uncle Frank had married Aunty Winnie in June 1939 and they had their daughter Brenda (only child, sadly now deceased) on 11/7/44, the birth is underlined in red on the attached sheet (21 of 36). This occurred in the emergency maternity home which had been set up in Ruskin College, Oxford, according to this record. Family life continued despite the war. After the birth it looks like Frank was promoted to Corporal possibly. He also got in trouble for cooking food in "an unauthorised place" in July 45 but this doesn't seem to have effected his war record which is very positive.
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This page obviously repeats some details from the earlier page you posted, concerning his draft. The draft code RVGZF refers to the body of men which were brought together ready to embark on a ship or convoy. I had thought there was a direct correlation between the draft code and the convoy number, but I can't find the link which is why I crossed out that part of my earlier reply.
Once he arrived in theatre (BNAF) on 27 November he was placed on the X list subsection (iv). This category is for "Unposted reinforcements in the theatre of war belonging to the unit or corps". In other words he had not yet been allocated to a unit immediately on arrival. However this changed on 13 December when he was allocated for permanent attachment (PA) to the RAC (Royal Armoured Corps) training (?) Depot. The role of the BNAF RAC training Depot was to marry up new tank crews fresh from the UK with the tanks they would be operating in North Africa and later Sicily and Italy. This involved a certain amount of familiarisation training and gunnery practice the conditions of Morocco. His job was obviously to feed these men while they were there.
After the birth of his daughter, the next three lines refer to him being promoted, first, as an unpaid acting corporal, then paid acting corporal and finally to war substantive corporal. The latter meant that had he served on after the end of hostilities he would have reverted to the rank of Lance Corporal.
The entry after he was severely reprimanded has me puzzled. It seems to say that he came under the administration of 104 GA (whatever that was), and placed on the X(2) list. However, the X(2) list is for soldiers undergoing a sentence of imprisonment, which he wouldn't have been because he was only reprimanded. Very odd.
The next part about his demobilisation medical is self-explanatory, and once again he posted to the X list, this time under subsection ( 8 ) which is for "non-effective personnel held at a Base Reinforcement Unit whose return to the UK has been authorised." He is struck off the strength of Central Mediterranean Forces (CMF) to the UK. I think the next line means that he ceased to be eligible for the Mediterranean Allowance, but this is a guess. He was transferred to the Z Reserve on 20 Jan 1946.
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Just re-reading my comments from yesterday evening, it occurs to me that it might be helpful to explain the purpose of the X list (today there is also a Y list but I'm not sure when that was introduced, possibly during or just after the Second World War - more on that at the end).
Every unit in the Army has an establishment. This is a table showing the required number of officers and soldiers, by rank, necessary to carry out the unit's task. The establishment has strength figures for peace and war. In the event of war, the unit will (theoretically) be brought up to its wartime establishment by calling up soldiers of the correct ranks from the reserve.
The location of all serving soldiers has to be accounted for at all times by holding them against an establishment. However for flexibility there needs to be a way of recording the fact that a soldier is temporarily between establishments, for instance because he is on a long course, or is moving overseas by ship, etc. To cover these sorts of events he is placed on the X list, which is a purely paper exercise controlled by the parent Manning and Record Office of the Regiment or Corps concerned. Technically the Record Office is looking after the day to day administration of a soldier on the X list, although in practice this is often handled by a depot somewhere. Originally the X list was used to account for all soldiers, but today it is just used for effective soldiers. Effective here means he is physically available and able to carry out his role as a soldier. The Y list is used to account for non-effective soldiers, for instance because they are long-term sick, a prisoner of war, a deserter or absent without leave over 28 days.
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Thanks again Andy for fantastic detail. According to another sheet he married Winifred on 12th June 1939. Do you see this fitting in with dates on the attached (sheet 4 of 36)? I assume he would have been in the Reserve at this time. War was declared about 10 weeks after their marriage on 3/9/39. Presumably people could see it coming & thought it best not to wait.
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Yes I think you are right that the decision to marry may well have been prompted by the knowledge he would soon be recalled to the Colours (ie rejoin the Army for the remainder of his commitment). Since the Munich Crisis in September 1938, the news was all about when, not if, there was likely to be a war with Germany. So he and the other reservists would have known this was coming.
His recall letter was dated 15 Jun 1939, but he was given time to get his affairs sorted out before needing to report to the Depot at Invicta Barracks, Maidstone on 1 September 1939. At that point his commitment was to complete the original 12 year engagement from when he first enlisted on 27 July 1931, but later legislation extended his engagement for 'the duration of hostilities'. The deal was that he was to be given preferential treatment when it came to demobilisation at the end of the war.
Just a couple of other details.
The reference to B120 in red at the top of the page, is to his regimental conduct sheet (Army Form B 120). This would show any disciplinary action against him awarded by his commanding officer, but not any similar disciplinary action by his company commander (recorded on Army From B121 - this would have been retained by his battalion and destroyed once he left the service). The severe reprimand he received later on would have been on his regimental conduct sheet.
The column headed Part II orders on the right hand side refers to the documentation created by his unit concerning various stages of his career, such as postings, promotions etc.
We can see that after his time at the depot where he received his recruit and initial infantry training, he was posted to the 2nd Battalion on 28 February 1932. The battalion was based in Aldershot from 1930 and then moved to Shorncliffe in 1934. This is where he earned his first promotion to Lance Corporal, albeit unpaid at this stage. Since this was just under 6 years after he first joined up, that is a fairly typical timescale for a reasonably good soldier. He was initially unpaid probably as he was on probation in his new rank.
Then on 4 January 1938 he was posted to the 1st Battalion. This probably because he was nearing the end of his initial 7 years of regular service ('with the colours'), and the 2nd Battalion had just departed Shorncliffe to go overseas to Palestine. The 1st Battalion had just returned from many years in India (latterly in Karachi) and were now based in Aldershot.
We then jump forward to his recall to the colours in September 1939. He retained his former rank of Lance Corporal and as we know, rejoined the 1st Battalion. They were part of 10 Infantry Brigade and deployed to France on the outbreak of war as part of the British Expeditionary Force. There then followed the Phoney War in the Autumn of 1939 before the rapid German advance through the Low Countries, and the debacle at Dunkirk, which we have already discussed.
One last item. In the right hand margin are what I take to be his Prudential Building Society Account details. It may well be that he made an allotment from his pay to go to support his wife and this was the account to which the money would have been sent. Otherwise she would have had to visit the barracks in Maidstone every 2 weeks to collect the money in cash.
As a matter of interest who was responsible for the redactions in white at the top of the form, you or the MOD? I was trying work out what information could have been so sensitive as to need redaction by the MOD.
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The redactions in white were me. I just removed his surname & army number. Just being cautious.
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Yes, I understand. I wondered if the redaction under the 'B120 held' was connected to his regimental conduct sheet, but now I see it would have been his Army number written well above the line.
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I was interested to see that you thought Frank might have left Dunkirk as part of Operation Dynamo on the 7th June. It seems late to me. Looking at sources that give the "last boat" out of Dunkirk they often quote HMS Shikari which allegedly made its last trip on the 4th June. What is it that makes you think he might have been evacuated under Dynamo rather than Aerial?
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I don't have any strong or direct evidence. My assumption was based the fact that the later Operations Cycle and Aerial didn't begin until 10 Jun and 13 June respectively, therefore if he was recorded as being on the Isle of Wight on 7 June, that indicated he left France/Belgium earlier. You probably need to consult the 1 RWK war diary for the period to get the best explanation of how he got back to the UK. Things were pretty chaotic, so in many cases the ships and other craft did not maintain complete lists of individual soldiers or indeed the exact units / sub-units they carried.
Going back to your original posting about this on page one of the thread, you mentioned the second date of 24/6/40. This was the date that the Record office was notifed via (I assume) a Part II order serial number 1/6. In other words it seems to have taken about 2 weeks for the Battalion to assemble the figures, suggesting that the men of the Battalion may have been initially scattered around the South Coast after they were successfully evacuated.
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Thanks to everyone for answering my questions. I understand that I'll need to look through the RWK war diary for 39/40 if I want to try to identify the officer for whom he was a batman who was shot in France. The "severe reprimand" incident does seem quite out of character. I wondered if anything like that would appear in the records. He had a genetic disorder (Huntington's Disease) which eventually killed him & can produce unpredictable behaviour & a range of problems. It also killed his brother Robert & his daughter, both mentioned in the records. However his time in the army was very positive & he worked successfully as a crane driver for many years after the war.
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I did a bit of investigation into the issue of 'cooking in an unauthorised place' and could find no information on what this might entail. It isn't a military offence in the sense of the Army Act 1938. I can find nothing in the Manual of Army Cooking which defines either an authorised or unauthorised place. King's Regulations also do not mention rules about cooking. By definition, Army cooks have to be able to cook in the field when required, and in my personal experience that means setting up a cookhouse in some fairly dirty and unpleasant surroundings. The obvious point is that the cooking itself should be done in a hygienic manner, but I can't see how a place would be 'authorised'. The nearest I came to what might be an explanation was found in the Manual of Army Cooking 1915. This said that the Cook Sergeant was responsible for ensuring that the place where food was cooked by the company cooks was suitably equipped and in a clean state. However that applied before centralised mess halls were instituted, so I'm not sure how relevant that was to a cook operating in North Africa in 1945.
A severe reprimand is quite a serious punishment, albeit without any financial penalty or loss of liberty, and would usually only be given where the alternative punishment might be a reduction in rank. Since he was about to be demobbed and therefore lose his rank anyway, surely this would have been a fairer punishment.