Genealogy Chat

Hi All
Just printed off a WW1 pensions record for my great uncle from Ancestry and it revealed that he only served 32 days before being discharged for misconduct ! Do I have any chance of finding out what he did to be discharged, do you think ?!
Cheers
Marie x

Did you check all the pages of his entry. Irene

There might be court martial records, if he was court martialled, that is!

Thanks for the replies, sorry it's took a while to reply. Yes I did check all of the pages of his entry and it says nothing about court martial, just discharged due to misconduct but shall certainly look into the possibility that he was court martialled. Thanks for the thoughts x

This seems odd to me. Though in the early part of the war men were happy to volunteer; before very long there were compelled to join and lots of them would have been very happy to get out by a bit of misconduct.
The records I have seen have shown quite a few men discharged after a few days or weeks due to being too unfit to be of any use to the army - big stink made at the time that the people were so malnurished as children that they were not fit enough to be turned into soldiers.
So are you sure he was dicharged due to misconduct? If he was it is unlikely they would have given him any pension and I'd have thought misconduct would have had him punished but not let out of the service.
Bryan

Thanks for your reply Bryan. The record I viewed and printed off was a WW1 army pensions record from Ancestry, but I will double check it now tonight when I get in from work ! It definitely says "discharged due to misconduct" and then it says "unlikely to become an efficient soldier". Like I say I will double check.
Thanks
Marie

Just an update to say that I read through the stuff on ancestry and they reckon the records are for men who are claiming a disability pension from the army, so does this suggest he was poorly or injured do you think ?
Marie

A little thing I ran across and remembered reading in this thread ...

http://hometown.aol.co.uk/kevinasplin/IYhistory.html

Discussing the second wave of soldiers sent to fight, he says:

"If some ‘slippage’ in standards had been allowed in the original contingent, those in the new yeomanry were at times ignored. **Over 700 men who had been passed fit in England were sent back from South Africa as medically unsuitable or unlikely to become efficient soldiers.** At least those who proved fit had come from hard existences that if nothing else, prepared them for the harsh life on the veldt. Problems also occurred with the officer selection that was an administration disaster, it caused men to be chosen who had no experience or leadership potential. Some officers were sent straight back home after being found to be cowards, drunkards or just plain incompetent. To counter these problems the companies of yeoman were increased to 155 men (so less officers were required), officers were drafted in from other units and some of the original contingent were convinced to stay on."

So I wonder whether the record you have might have related to something like alcoholism.


(Kevin Asplin's excellent site mainly about the Boer War is familiar to many here:

http://hometown.aol.co.uk/kevinasplin/home.html

It's a good place to look for someone who is missing from the 1901 census; I happened on the site by accident when it turned up in the google results for the name of someone I was looking for who had disappeared from the census.)

Kathryn and Robert...thankyou so much for your replies. I must admit I had guessed at something like drunkeness lol. It would be great to get the service record, will def look into this. Off to look at 1914-1918 web page now.
Thanks again
Marie x

There was I thinking my Grandfther had the shortest service record. He served for 29 days before going AWOL.
They must have found him as 6 months later he was discharged for Larceny!