jaycee dove

Want to remove this ad? Please sign in or register for free today.

Just wondering if anyone has researched World War 1 enlistment in the valley?

I have my granddad's war medals and with the use of ancestry have traced just a tiny bit about his war service, principally just the regiments he was with. His full record, sadly, like with many other people's service file, was destroyed in the blitz.

He lived in Waterfoot and Stacksteads all of his life (until the last four years when he moved in with my mum in Manchester after he was diagnosed with cancer). Yet he seemingly joined the King's Liverpool Regiment (without any connection to the city) and this service number is on his medals. But according to the medal book he then ended the war with the Lancashire Fusiliers and was given a second service number.

It is unlikely that I will be able to discover much about his movements during the war - especially as his name Joseph (Edward) Taylor is such a common one.

But I have been trying to figure out why he joined a Liverpool regiment instead of the more local one where he ended the war.

I have no knowledge of military units but was this common practice at the time or were you just told what regiment to join based on who needed men?

Rossday

I am research the soldiers who are named on the Rawtenstall Municipal War Memorial and whilst the majority had joined one of the Lancashire regiments it often happened they would be enrolled into any regiment that had suffered large loses, and possibly seconded (temporary transfer) or attached (and given a new number) to another regiment later on in the war for the same reason.

__________________
Some days I sit and think.
And some days I just sit.

jaycee dove

Thanks very much for your speedy reply. That must have been what happened.

He joined the 11th King's Liverpool Regiment and ended the war in the 19th Lancashire Fusiliers.

Though given his age (18 after the war had started) he likely only served from around 1916 I think. His numbers seem to support that as far as I can sort of decipher how they worked on line - 91577 in the KLR and 62694 in the LF. Which seem quite late on.

The photo I have of him with my gran seems to show a LF uniform based on the cap.

Just frustrating that as no records escaped the blitz I cannot find out when he was with each regiment to figure out where he might have gone with them.

Must try to find some war diaries for these units.

kid70s

my grandad joined up in 1914. he joined the rifle brigade a southern regiment. His reasoning was that if he got homesick he would be to far from home and to skint that he wouldnt be able to go awaol if he got homesick. Like a lot of folk at the time he'd never been out of rawtenstall.

He was shot at loose in 1915, they were going to take his leg off but he wouldnt let them. Good call cause he was still walking 40 miles a week around the valley in the 1970s collecting for the prudential