Help finding Sapper Royal Engineers

[MaureenHB]

Wow, ShaunJ, yes I think that may be him! Thank you so much.

[mmm45]

The WR prefix is for the waterways and railways branch of Royal Engineers so looking good.

Ady

[jim1]

Well done Shaun
His 15 Star Roll gives a qualifying date of 28/8/15 under 10197 Pte. 6th. Lincs. Regt. theatre 2A
(Greek Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and European Turkey).
This is what the Long, Long Trail says:

6th (Service) Battalion
 Formed at Lincoln in August 1914 as part of K1 and came under command of 33rd Brigade in 11th (Northern) Division.
 Moved to Gallipoli in July 1915. Landed at Suvla Bay 7 August 1915. Went to Egypt in January 1916 and thence to France in July 1916.

[MaureenHB]

Thank you for your help, that's amazing. How do I go about getting his service record now? I am not sure which of those numbers to look under and nothing is coming up on Ancestry.

[Ellenmai]

The regimental numbers sometimes don't seem to help much when searching on Ancestry. It helps if you have their date of birth and wife's name, or if single next of kin. If you know them I could take a look on Find My Past for you.

[MaureenHB]

Thank you Ellenmai, George married Ethel Jessie Mary Bunn on the 13th November 1917. His birth year working back from that would have been 1889 but I don't know exact date of birth I'm afraid. His address on the marriage cert is Westfield avenue, Selby.

[ShaunJ]

It looks like his army records haven't survived (some 60% were destroyed through enemy action in 1940).

[jim1]

Looking at Lincs. no's. around his all of the men joined in 1914.
This seems to back that up.
Men joining the Lincs. service battalions were given numbers from the same series that had been in use by the regular battalions.

c9763 to 107**
Issue of these numbers dates to August 1914 and therefore, by definition, mostly to men joining the 6th Battalion.