Summary
- 966 – Men identified with service number (unchanged)
- 811 – Confirmed ’08 service numbers (unchanged)
- 91 – Men identified without service number (unchanged)
- 75 – Portraits (+5)
- 62 – Descendants contacted (+1)
- 47 – Profiles drafted (+1)
Image Catalogue finally completed
My main focus for January was to finish the Image Catalogue and I’m pleased to say that this is finally done. The aim of the catalogue is to group the pictures of the Brigade together to allow them to be more easily found. I have therefore grouped the pictures in a number of different ways:
- By unit – If you know which unit your ancestor served in you can search that way; 1st Battery, 2nd Battery or by the Depot
- By location – The Brigade spent time in a wide range of different places, from Cambridge to Cairo, from Shrewsbury to the Suez Canal.
- Portraits – I’ve also grouped together all of the portraits that have been found
- Documents – And finally, all of the different documents are indexed and searchable.
You can find the new Image Catalogue here.
A lucky find of 2 more portraits
After I finished the Image Catalogue, I spent a few hours playing with internet search terms to see if I could find anything new. Once again, I wasn’t expecting to find anything, but was pleasantly surprised to find a photo on the Peoples Collection of Wales of ‘The Saddlers of he Welsh Division, Bedford, 1915‘.
In that photo, there are 2 members of the Brigade, Sadler Sgts W. Mason & J Nicholson. Both men appear in the 1915 photograph of the Brigade NCOs, but their faces are much clearer in this picture.
A Second Pass through the Nominal Roll
And finally, towards the end of the month, I decided to start a second pass through the nominal roll.
The first time I did this, my only objective was to find ancestors via Ancestry family trees to attempt to gather more information.
This time, I’m taking a slower and more careful approach. For every soldier, if I am able to identify them in the records, I am starting to add working notes to their profiles with elements like date of birth, occupation and address. I’m also checking the military sources to see whether any other information has survived, like FMP medical records or wound stripes. The final step is to check to see whether it is worth contacting any other Ancestry tree owners.
I’ve completed about 30 of these and as a result made contact with one new family; the family of 670, Fred Frost. Fred Frost was a Blacksmith from Pembrokeshire, who joined the Brigade in late 1912 when his family moved to Dunvant.
He was clearly a good soldier and by the time the Brigade left for France in 1915, he was already a Corporal. He travelled with the Brigade to the France and on to Egypt where he ultimately transferred to 301 Bde, part of the 60th London Division. The next record relating to him is from Nov 1917, when he had been admitted to hospital wounded. His grandson told me: he told us how he had been shot by a Turkish Sniper in the stomach. In those days, they didn’t take the bullet out, it stayed there for the rest of his life. He added that: Some time in the 50’s, he had to go into hospital and have an X-Ray. Shortly after, a worried nurse came rushing in asking him if he knew what the strange object on the X-ray was in his stomach. He told them it was a Turkish bullet from the First War.
Whilst we cannot be certain, it is likely that he was wounded at the 3rd Battle of Gaza.
After he recovered, he was granted a commission. The South Wales Weekly Press reported BLACKSMITH TO LIEUTENANT, the article went on to say Sergeant Fred Frost, of Dunvant who has been granted a commission in the Egyptian Army, was originally attached to the R.F.A., having seen service in the Egyptian and Palestine campaigns, and has been rather seriously wounded on one occasion, but is now back in the front line.
It was pleasure to speak to his grandson and listen to his memories of his grandfather. He concluded our discussion by saying; He was a wonderful grand-dad, a lovely man, he never lost his temper. He was large fellow with broad shoulders, he loved his fishing and enjoyed going to the Conservative Club.
Next month
Next month I will continue to work through the Nominal Roll and hopefully will get to speak to more families.
I’m also looking forward to getting some new service records back from the National Archives. Thanks to some great advice, I discovered a huge list of surviving post-war service records and have confirmed 19 new service records have survived. Unfortunately these records have to be paid, so I will only be getting a limited few
