WWI photo help - who/what/where/when?

[baardsgirl]

Hello!
This photo from my grandmother's photo album shows my grandfather, Leonard James b. 28 September 1900 in Selly Oaks (England). He is seated in the first row, farthest to the left.

Grandpa James was one of nine children born to a fairly poor family in Birmingham, and the story goes that he joined the army (?) quite young and received most of his education there.

The uniform looks, to me, to be very tropical and the corrugated iron shed also suggests a warmer clime. My father says that Grandpa served as a Coldstreamer and spent some time in Turkey during the first world war. Could this photo be from that time?

Thanks so much!

[mmm45]

It's post war they have medal ribbons so it's sometime after 1921 I would think.

Ady

[scrimnet]

And for someone born in 1900 it is really difficult to see him make Sgt by the time of Gallipoli!!


The style of KD is WW1 ish.... But I would also go interwar....

[baardsgirl]

Thank you both for your input!


Do you have any tips about the regiment or uniform they are wearing? With a name like Leonard James there are a few candidates (to put it mildly!) in the defence force records of the day and I don't have any regiment / service number nor anything other than my father's statemet that his dad 'was a coldstreamer'.


May seem like a dumb question, but am I correct in saying that Len does not have a medal ribbon on his uniform?



Thanks again! Sarah

[scrimnet]

He has no medals ribbons at all....I have played with the pic and cannot see any tribal distinctions at all sadly....The only ideation we  would have towards a regimental ID would be shoulder titles or cap badges or a Regt flash...None of which can be seen here...Neither can we say if he was cavalry or infantry, due to the lack of puttees!!!

[scrimnet]

All we can say is that it is somewhere across the Med...From Gib across to Cyprus, including Palestine and North Africa!!

[scrimnet]

ahhhh!! A Guardsman (woodentop! lol)....Now then...You may be able to get something from the Guards museum at Wellington Bks in London...They hold the records of all Guardsmen. You have a name and a date of birth....A possibility...

[scrimnet]

The 1st bn Coldstreams was in Egypt in 1931....

2nd bn in Egypt in 1932...

And the 3rd bn in Palestine and Egypt from October 1936, and perhaps more importantly to you...In Turkey in 1922/3

We may have narrowed it down to a battalion....

[baardsgirl]

Good idea, Scrimnet, I will contact the Guards museum and see if anyone there can point me in the right direction. And now I have a starting point (3rd battalion - 1923) to give to them.

Thanks so much again!

Have a great evening