peter monahan

Sturnhorn Welcome to the GMIC! Sorry to see that no one else has answered your question. perhaps you could post a little more information or even a photograph of the bayonet which has this marking on it, so we have a little more to go on? In the meantime, here is a site which covers a lot - but obvioulsy not ALL - British and Commonwealth bayonet markings. Keep in mnd that anything produced for the British Army was used throughout the Empire and sold to places like Egypt as well. http://oldmilitarymarkings.com/brit_bayo.html I hope this is some help. Again, welcome to the Club. Peter

My ignorance of the Tirailleurs Senegalais is almost complete, but my study of the British Indian Army and, to a lesser extent the British African forces such as the Hausa Regiment and the Gold Coast units suggest to me that these troops would have been carrying whatever was oldest in the French arsenals. Colonial troops were, sadly, generally regarded as 'second line troops' at least by the maudit pekin in France and almost certainly got what was left on the shelf after the French units had been issued their arms. They probably rated ahead of the cadets and town guards, or their French equivalents, but only slightly! You can imagine the outcry in the National Assembly if a black colonial unti ad the most up to date rifles issued them and it then turned out that even one new recruit in France had something older! There was also the rarely expressed but very common thought that 'We don't want to give them the best stuff in case they desert/mutiny/quit'. Feel free to treat these ramblings with all the attention they deserve! Peter

Posted in error.

Both pieces well up to your usual high standards and sure to be treausred by the recipients. Glad to see retirement hasn't paled so far. What is it, three weeks now?

Yep, that's Welsh! No vowels!

Well spotted, Mike! Mystery solved, if in a less than 100% satisfying manner. Darn those Personal Physicians anyway!

Wow! A VC which Lord WHositz hasn't snagged.

That was my source as well. It also lists his having enlisted with the 34th Bttn - which would fit his hometown but dying with the 24th Bttn, and I did initially wonder if that was an error. It may well be a mistake, then. I didn't find any reference to his 'MC' but put it down to my search skills. There were only two 'Ralph Weaver's in the CEF and only one Lt. R.L. Weaver, so the two references in the Gazette which do appear are probably him: seconded to the War Department in October 17 [Nov. LG] and back to unit in March '18. The notice says 'Quebec Regiment' which I suspect is WD shorthand for the Victoria Rifles, with whom he was serving at his death. He was a bookkeeper in 1911 but on enlistment in '15 gives his trade as 'C.E.' so maybe seconded to tunnelling or ordnance training in the UK? Tentatively I have decided that, as he had 4 years experience as a Liet. in the pre-war militia, he was taken into the 34th in that rank. It went to the UK in late '15 and was broken up for drafts, eventually becoming a 'Boys Battalion' for underage soldiers. I believe he went straight from the 34th to the 24th and, after his secondment, served with them until killed in early October, 1918. The difgitization of the CEf ecords has reached the H's and God knows how long it will take to finish, so I will be finishing the research on the 70 men from my area who died 1915-19 with very bare bones info. in many cases: local paper's obits, attestation papers, CWG and Ancestry.com but not the full military service records, which generally include pay records, a summary of transfers and travel and any medical info. It is both sad and surprising how little record exists of many of these men from an agrarian and only semi-literate era. Thanks, gents, for the assistance.

I have been trying to locate the MC citation / London Gazette for Lieut. Ralph Lincoln Weaver, born in the US of Canadian parents who was serving with the 24th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force on his death in October 2nd, 1918. I began the evening with the naive belief that I could navigate the search functions on the LG site and ended it with some very unkind thoughts about both the Gazette and, quite unfairly, my computer. Any assistance would be appreciated! Peter

You're probably right that the sash is significant. Maddening, isn't it? And to add incult to injury we can't even guess whether the 'missing' bits were dropped by the engraver and actually missing from the uniform on which the engraving is based.

Very nice!

I agree that this must be a name-able individual - clearly a portrait and not a generic 'officer of the...' so the medla combo is probably broadly correct and may be completely correct, but as Paul says we weren't ALWAYS at wore with France except for the Crimea and, just possibly, the artist cribbed some of the medal details from another bloke, not realizing that people such as we would care 150 years later! In conclusion? "God knows and He's not telling."

Lovely work, Madziro. Thank you for sharing it! Can you, or any member, say whether or not there is any significance to the slight but noticeable change in the head and horn posture between the 1914-31 badge and the later versions? Possibly just a different artist, but most regiments at have at least local legends around such changes. Just curious.

I suspect the secret of the identity is contained in whatever bit of the badge - now missing - is represented by the slot in the bottom face, which presumably originally held a cipher or numeral. I wonder whether another unit than the Burma Rifles would also have adopted the peacock emblem, so I tend to believe it is a 70th badge, but possibly for a band or some other use wherein a deliberately anachronistic useage. My tuppence worth.

A bit of a rogue marries a bit of a chancer! There's a TV mini-series in there somewhere! And one wonders whether his death at age 38 was related to his war service, the general standards of health at the time or something less palatable. Well, every family has one! Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

In the late 19th and early 20th century a huge number of men, in GB and North Ameirca, and I suspect in Europe, belonged to 'fraternal organizations' - a place to go for a quiet drink between work and the family, and often involved in communal good works - and there miust have been millions, literally, of membership tokens of various sorts. Obviously, from a quick scan, there are collectors and a market for them, so you should be able to get more info. Good luck with the hunt! Peter

These coins or tokens were issued by a number of fraternal orders and carried by the members so that they could prove their membership status [if the secret handshake or watch fob weren't enough proof]. The modern equivalent are popular in some military groups and are called 'challenge coins'. If I was, say, in Iraq with the Royal Marines in 2012 and meet somebosy else who was or says he was, I have to pull the coin out of my pocket. If he can't do the same he pays for the beer. Or gets beat up,. i guess, if I decide he's a liar. here's a very basic site on such tokens: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/us-coins/fraternal-tokens These don't have the details filled in but presumably yr Great granfer had at least one with the requiste dates for his entry, passage of the 'exam' and so on. I hope this helps a little.

Times have changes indeed. My mother once sat and listened to a 'little Oriental looking man' - her description - deliver a few lines in a language which none of the 1,000+ people in the hall even recognized. The language was Inuktitut and he was what we unreconstructed imperialists would call an 'Eskimo'. He also displayed the numbered tag he was issued by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and our federal government, used to keep track of he and his kin because their names were 'too hard' for the bureuacrats who showed up once a year to hand out 'gifts' to the King/Queen's loyal subjects! I think I'd be ok with medals named in the recipient's original language, even if it did cost a couple bob more.

Well, I'd buy an LSGC issued in Manx just for curiosity sake!

I suspect that the answer lies in the issuing authroity and provenance of the awards, which is the Crown, which operates, as far as I know, solely in English, whatever linguistic vagaries the outlying bits of the realm practice. [Joking! Joking!] As to why it doesn't change, aside from the inevitable screams of outrage from traditionalists of the non-Celtic/Manx/Cornish sort, two answers which are really one: inertia and, to quote the wonderful show 'Yes, Minister', 'When it not necessary to act, it is necessary NOT to act.'

Me too. The casualty rates among Stretcher Bearers and Medical Officers were the same as for rilfmen and two of the three 'double VCs' ever awarded were to MOs. I'm a humble SB and in our activities we portray the men who didn't survive the wounds and burials too. A number of the Chinese Labour Corps died while doing their work too - disease, unexploded ordnance and so on - and they were just cheap labour for the British, so got zero recognition at the time.

Thanks! I'm very involved with a group which portrays WWI Canadian medical Corps, so, sadly, grave diggers are a related theme. As they say, doctors get to bury their mistakes.

Very nice! And fairly rare, I would think, especially outside Greece. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting photo. I particularly like the mix of hat styles. Is this, do you think, made during or after the war? One of the great untold stories of WWI from the Allied perspective is the work done by the Chinese Labour Corps in locating and re-burying human remains, as well as salvaging equipment and scrap, in 1919-1920.

Sadly, the detail on the uniform is not sufficient to allow even establishing a rank, so it could be any one of hundreds of officers. I also wonder whether it is a personal portrait, made for a family member, or portrays a famous officer. If the latter, that may increase the odds of identifying it but the only way I can think of is to search for named portraits from the period and see if you find a match. It is a lovely thing and must have been dear to the original owner.