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General => Armed Forces => Topic started by: Cell on Sunday 03 November 24 07:26 GMT (UK)
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Hi,
As per my header, are army records ever incorrect with some of the posted and served dates written on them?
Below is a very small part of my granddads long army record . I've gone over it time and time again with a fine tooth comb -. I can't find anything in it that says any different to the below dates in the records of the exact month from when he served in Palestine .
According to the records he was posted 28 th of Jan 1938 , ( 27th according to another relevant bit, which I wil post next) and served out there until 12 April 1939.
I am not querying if he went to Palestine in 1938 , as I know he was out there that year, what I am querying is the month he was apparently posted out there , and I also want to make sure that he would have had no leave during this time out there ( there's no leave written down throughout his army record during his stint in Palestine to say he went back to the uk for a time)
My question is, is it 100% that he was on his way to Palestine , ( left the UK) from 27/28 th of January? Or are the army sometimes incorrect with their dates on the records , because if he did leave at that date - I have a huge problem! And I don't want to jump to any conclusions if there it is a possibilty he may have been still in the UK around April to May in the same year in 1938 and then posted to out to Palestine
My second questions is , if he 100%, was posted out there in Jan , is there any slight possibility he could have been granted leave back to the UK just a couple of months later around April/ May , just for a short time, then shipped back out to Palestine ? ( he was 100% in Palestine in Nov 1938 when he ran over a landmine in his truck Newspaper reports at the time agree with that exact date on the army record.)
Sorry for what may seem like silly question to some, but I have to rule out any possibilities that maybe the army is incorrect with their exact month of Jan that they say he served from in Palestine.
One of my parent's older siblings was conceived around May in 1938 and 100% impossible to have been conceived in Jan 1938 ( the child in question was born at the end of Jan 1939 ) If the date.( 27/28 Jan)on the record that he was went to Palestine are correct - it really would be 100% impossible for my grandfather to be the child's father - Which I find really surprising ( as my granddad would have 100% known the child wasn't his of course - he never gave any inkling that the child was not his and neither did the child know). This child was born years into their marriage .
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So you can see why I am questioning the exact month written on his army record.
Thank you so much for any help.
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2nd photo
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3rd photo, although this bit says from 1937 ( when the others say he was posted in Jan 1938)
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4th photo , which the Nov date on their
records matches exactly with reports in the newspapers of the incident ( so this little bit of his service record for the year of 1938 in Palestine is 100% correct)
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As with anything created by a human, a clerical error is always possible, but since in many cases dates such as these were related to pay and allowances a soldier might receive, extra care was taken to ensure accuracy.
It's worth explaining how information came to be recorded on service records. The master document was maintained in a Record Office in the UK, usually in a location well away from the units it served. In the main part of the records you will see a column on the left hand side headed Authority or similar. This is where the source of the information is recorded. If a soldier was posted as an individual the authority was likely to be a posting order initiated by the Record Office. If it was a unit move, the authority will probably be a War Office reference. For example, in your first photo, the reference DO stands for Draft Order, ie a unit move. If the occurrence was something that happened within the man's unit, such as a promotion, leave, going into hospital, attending a course etc, then the unit would send this information using what is known as a Part 2 Order. These were typed out in a predetermined format by a clerk in the unit orderly room and sent to the Record Office. Usually this document, containing information about several soldiers, would be compiled on a weekly basis, and would have been sent by post, so it could take some time to arrive back at the Record Office. All Pt 2 Orders were serial-numbered so if one went astray the Record Office would know and could ask for it to be sent again. A Part 2 Order would give a start date for whatever event was being notified, and might give an end date in the same order, or in a subsequent Pt2 Order. Therefore the Record Office had a complete duplicate of whatever was recorded in the soldier's unit about him.
There are parts of a soldier's record which are not maintained in this way. One example is your third image which relates to the soldier's medical history. This will be a combination of opinion by a doctor or medical orderly, eg a diagnosis, or facts, such as when he went into hospital (the hospital would also use a specific form to notify the Record Office, similar to apart 2 order). And lastly a medical entry might be based on what the soldier himself answered, as you can see in your example where it says "in what countries have you served and for what periods?" Clearly there what has been recorded is based on the soldier's memory after the event so may be inaccurate.
Other parts of the record may also be based on what the soldier said, for example in earlier, pre 1930s, enlistments the soldier would give his age in years and months but since he wouldn't have been asked for his birth certificate, it was easy for this information to be wrong. This doesn't apply in your case as, by the 1930s, enlistees did have to provide a birth certificate.
The overall rule is that throughout his career a soldier had to 'belong' somewhere. The chain of Part 2 orders and posting orders etc should have no gaps. A soldier would be struck off strength of his first unit and taken on strength of his second unit on two successive days. Obviously if he had to travel, perhaps by sea, he could not physically move between units in a single 24 hour period. Therefore the date he was taken on the strength of his new unit would often indicate that that was when he started his journey. Before long transits by sea it was usual for a soldier to be given embarkation leave, perhaps as much as 14 days, in which to see family and to gather any additional necessaries for his overseas posting. Similarly a soldier returning from a long posting overseas might also get disembarkation leave. At times a soldier might be posted to something called the Y list. This was a paper exercise to account for things like long term sickness, long courses away from the unit and so on.
Leave was always possible during peacetime, but if a man was serving in Palestine in the 1930s it is highly unlikely that he would have been able to get back to the UK, due to the time it took to sail from the Middle East to the UK, and back again. The exception might be compassionate leave, perhaps because a parent was dangerously ill or dying. In a case like that, due to the urgency, a soldier would probably be moved back to the UK on an RAF flight, and to return to his unit the same way. If a civil airline was available that too might have been used (and paid for by the Army) instead of the RAF. A soldier is unlikely to have been able to pay for civil air flight for ordinary leave.
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You can find some extra details about Part 2 Orders in this thread from the greatly missed MaxD: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=785609.0
Below is an example of a Part2 order from the First World War. As you can see, the clerk has used a blue pencil to mark that the entries have been transferred to the soldiers' records.