HAL (part 2)

This week, thanks to an ancestry website offering free access to WWI documents I have finally been able to plug a gap in family history research. On 4 August 2014, I published a short post about my Great Grandfather HAL. The story was purely personal based on items that had been kept and passed down from my Grandmother and offered little insight into his military experience other than that of his death which we could be confirmed through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. However, with the documents posted online I have managed to answer a few of the questions I had about HAL’s short military career. For example, I now know that he ‘attested’ to short service on 3 December 1915, as part of the Derby Scheme. This scheme, also known as the Group Scheme was introduced in the spring of 1915 through the National Registration Act and required all men aged between 15 and 65 to register with the military giving their employment details. Of the 5 million men registered by mid-September of that year, 1.6 million were in in ‘starred’ employment which were protected, high or scarce skilled jobs. Presumably HAL fell into that category with his job as an Inspector of Nuisances. Under the Derby Scheme, men were put into categories according to marital status and grouped by age ready to be called up in that way. They could agree to go into service immediately or defer their posting. HAL must have chosen the latter as the attestation form was not completed until September 1917 when he was enlisted into the 2nd London Sanitary Company section of the RAMC. This confirms that HAL managed to stay out of the war for some time.

I have in my possession some postcards from HAL addressed to him at the Red Cross Military Hospital at Richmond. I always assumed that he was receiving some training there from the medical corps. This might well have been the case, however, his medical records show that he had an infection which actually put him into hospital as a patient for 68 days from mid-October to late December 1917. The infection he had, can be cleared up easily now using antibiotics but back then there must have been little to cure this infection. However, he was discharged from hospital in December. He did not leave British shores until 1 March, 1918, when he embarked for Havre, and the OCB Infantry Base Depot from Southampton. These depots were where men received their training for the front, and waited to be sent to their base. In HAL’s case, this came within a few days as he was sent to Italy, possibly by train, on 5 March. On 30 of March he joined the 84th Sanitary Section, a division of the Field Ambulance, whose role was to make sure things such as water, cooking facilities and billets were clean enough for soldiers to use. They also ran the de-lousing stations.

HAL’s medical records note that he died from bronchial pneumonia following influenza. Presumably this was as a result of the Spanish Flu which swept through the battlefields of Europe at the time. 32,000 troops perished in the years 1918 and 1919 and Italy was badly affected. HAL’s belongings were sent back to his Wife in England and records of these possessions were also included in the new records on the ancestry website. These were: letters, photos, a notebook, 2 religious medallions, a cigarette case, two wallets, a key, a crucifix, a ring and four coins. We often wondered if he took a notebook with him and what happened to it, if he did. As a talented artist, it was surely an item he just had to take with him- is it possible that it was the notebook mentioned in my previous blog, which I now have in my possession?

The last useful documentation in this recently discovered collection, include information on the War Widows Pension that my Great Grandmother received for her and two children. From the end of April 1919, Ada was granted a pension of 25/5d per week. And that is the end of the story. More questions answered about another casualty of a pointless war. More children growing up without a Father, a wife without a Husband, Grandchildren without a Grandfather and Parents without a son. Lest we forget.