WW2 no service record?

[Andy J2022]

I'm glad that your quest was successful. You asked about abbreviations. The first significant one comes in the authority for his posting to Eastern Command. APM stands for Assistant Provost Martial - a staff officer in Headquarters of VP Wing.

Y list is an administrative holding position while a soldier is non-effective due to illness in hospital over 21 days. The significance of him being on the Y list was that his parent unit could ask for a temporary replacement to keep them up to their war establishment. It was not a posting as such and in most cases the soldier would return to his previous unit after coming off the Y list (assuming that his fitness level was suitable).
E5 was the lowest grading for a man who had been assessed as permanently unfit for service. The grade 5 represents the extent of his physical limitations, such as strength, endurance, mobility. It might also reflect visual or hearing problems.

In 1940, a system of categories was selected by the Army as follows:
· A1, A2, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5: These seven categories were based on vision in relation to shooting and driving, physical endurance, the ability to march and the manifestation of any other disease which would affect military duty. The categories also had caveats which determined both task and location worldwide.
· C: Home service only.
· D: Temporarily unfit.
· E: Permanently unfit.
The Army allocated a soldier to one of these categories
on the basis of the Civilian Medical Board grades.
Source: Fifty Years of PULHHEEMS—The British Army's System of Medical Classification by Col T P Finnegan, MSc, FFOM Colonel and Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff (Medical) Headquarters, Land Command, Wilton, Wiltshire, UK published in Annals Academy of Medicine September 2001, Vol. 30 No.5.

The 'unconnected' bit means that his disability was not attributable to his military service.

And yes some VP CMP companies were posted to North West Europe where they were employed guarding prisoner of war camps (see Wikipedia article History of the RMP).

[Andy J2022]

Two links which might be helpful:
WW2Talk forum thread entitled Corps of Military Police - 394/395 Coy Query
and
Corps of Military Police website. Specifically Vulnerable Points Companies in WW2

[ValJJJ]

Thanks Andy J2022, that's all helpful.

A family member thought he'd been gassed but not sure whether that was WW1 or 2. And might have just been an assumption because of struggling to breathe after running for a bus (after WW2).  He is stated fit for service in the attestation for WW2 though.

I'll look up those links.

[Andy J2022]

He wouldn't have been gassed in WW2. There was no significant use of gas as a weapon in Europe during WW2* and the few incidents were largely accidents confined to munition factories and storage depots. Since his grading of E5 was judged not attributable to his military service (in WW2), that would not have been the cause. He may have had a lung or heart condition arising from natural causes.

* The Nazis of course used chemical weapons in their extermination camps; and the Japanese used some chemical agents in the Far East, mainly in China and Burma until 1943 until a threat by the Americans to respond with chemical weapons caused them to stop.

[ValJJJ]

Yes I think the gas idea probably came from him having a health issue - probably a smoker as so many were.

From one of your links: ...There were two kinds of VP posts, VP1’s were guarded by VP Sections with various kinds of arms and were dug in in a static defensive position.   VP2’s were normal VP points and were operated as a flexible guard, these men normally carried truncheons and whistles.   These Companies were formed from older men and men of a lower medical category...

His kit issue included a truncheon and whistle and a whistle chain.