Hi Ken
Sorry to confuse everyone, including myself, I had completely forgotten that I'd got his reg.no from CWGC records. I know when George Reuben enlisted, as he was put into an orphanage in Hull when his elder brother enlisted on 1 January 1902, and I have what bit of information there is from the orphanage which shows that on 19 December 1908 he left the orphanage and joined the army. Of course, although it didn't click - senility coming on quite fast I think - I knew it was the 19th Hussars from the info on CWGC and also the fact that he is shown on the 1911 census as being with that regiment.
I've got the attestation papers for Thomas Benson and Walter Benson, a Rootschatter who happened to be at Kew, decided of her own accord to see if she could find them, which she did and then sent them to me.
Thomas's papers show that originally his no. was 5372 in 1902 until his discharge to Army Reserve/Special Reservist. When he became part of the regular army on 3.9.1914 he was given the no. 23176. His records show he was in 19th Hussars 1902-1913, then 14th Res ? Regt (that has been crossed through which is why I can't read the abbreviation between Res and Regt) and changed to 11th Hussars 'B' squad. His medal card shows Victory and British. I know he married a widow with 2 children during the war and was discharged in 1919 and went to live with her and her children in London. I've been in touch with a distant ancestor of the widow who says he was remembered as a very loving husband and stepfather.
Walter, my grandfather, never served in WWI and got himself out of the army in 1906 by pulling a sickie - although that is not the army term which I have forgotten, yet again. He ended up in an Asylum for 6 weeks and within a year was married and starting a family - not so ill after all. Hull Archives have looked at the asylum records and said there is absolutely nothing written about him, apart from the date of his entry and the date of his discharge 6 weeks later. The archivist made the comment that she had never seen a set of notes like it before.
However, I'm actually more interested in what happened to George Reuben. Aged 8 he is put in an orphanage as, presumably his eldest brother who was looking after him joined up and his sisters didn't, or couldn't care for him. He was there until age 14 when he left and joined the army, I assume 19th Hussars as that was who he was with in 1911 and on his death in 1917. I would love to know where the 19th Hussars were between 1911 and 1917, more specifically during WWI. His medal card shows Victory and British medal. There is also another medal card, same name, same regiment, but with a different regt.no - 6356, rather than 46530 which has 14 star awarded on 17.8.14. Whether this is also George Reuben I don't know, but it could be if 6356 was the original no. given to him in 1906. Along with George Reuben's medal card, there is another card headed "Correspondence" which has handwritten on it:
"6 i/c Cav.Recs requests auth. re disposal of meds dy 6122"- can't type that quite right, but it is 1 over 22 written as you'd write a fraction. I have no idea what that message means or when it was written.
All that is left of George is his name on Panel 1 of the Louverval Military Cemetery, France which I find very sad.
Whilst I was growing up (my grandfather was killed in a road accident in 1926 when my father was still a boy), all I was told was that my grandfather was an orphan with no relatives and it was not until I started researching the family tree that I found he had 5 siblings. By then my father had died and the only person left alive, my dad's sister, says she knows nothing about any of the other siblings of her father, even though one of the sisters (who would have been her aunt) lived in Hull with her husband and children, fairly close to her maternal gran and her aunts on that side of the family. I have no idea why my grandfather appears to have fallen out with the rest of them.
Lizzie
Sorry, had to modify this as my typing and brain are not in sync this morning.
