The King's Regiment (Men-at-Arms)

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Nine Victoria Crosses were awarded to men of the regiment, the first in 1900 and the last in 1918. An additional two were awarded to Royal Army Medical Corps officer Noel Godfrey Chavasse, who was attached to the 10th (Scottish) Battalion during the Great War. xxix] "The Fifth Northern Gen Hospital, Leicester", Col L.K.Harrison, Leicester University Library. The mystery that I couldn't explain, and that intrigued me more and more as time went on, was the glaring mismatch in those clues. The photo showed my Dad in the uniform of the Kings Liverpool Regiment (the cap badge is unmistakable) yet both the medals and the document appeared to indicate that he served only in the Norfolk Regiment. At a later stage of this research, when I had uncovered many of the facts, I discovered a document that confirmed all of the investigation work that I had done up to this point.

Casualty details of those who died in the war have been recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and their database is available freely online - but details about wounded soldiers are not so easy to obtain when the service record is missing. I wanted to know why there were two regiments? What happened to him in France? and where and when was he gassed? Then, using the same technique at the lower end of the list to explore numbers less than 49070 Jim LITTLER, I determined the lower limit of the sequence. The first man was 49000 Frank COLEMAN - beyond him searches for the next 50 numbers yielded blanks. I now had a list of 131 men who had been allocated numbers in the Kings Liverpool Regt. around that of my father - and I knew their names, their regiments, and their service numbers - all the information needed to begin the search for service records. Forty one Association members and their guests attended the National Memorial Arboretum for a Memorial Service in remembrance of those members of the Regiment who lost their lives in Northern Ireland during ‘Op Banner’. MORE INFO >>It seems a little odd that the only Norfolk Regt. service records to come through the 1940 fire belonged to men who had been killed in action. The only plausible explanation that occurred to me was that for some reason their records must have been stored separately from those of men who survived the war, in a location subject to less severe fire conditions. I'd always known that my Dad had been gassed in the war. I don't recall anyone ever telling me that, it seems to have been one of those bits of instinctive knowledge you just absorb unconsciously as you grow up, but to find that he suffered a bullet or shrapnel wound is a surprise - it was never mentioned at home. It would seem that the wound may have been so slight that he made a complete recovery and deemed it unworthy of comment in later life … but it was his second narrow escape - by inches.

Figure 21: 7th Norfolk's advance 8th Aug. - 28 th Oct.1918 overlaid (in red) onto a map published in The Times on 27 th Aug 1918. Locations from April to July referred to in the text are underlined in red. Herbert's were correct, a man's medals were supposed to be inscribed with his regimental details as they were on the day he landed overseas. My father's records seem to have been subject to administrative difficulties during the German spring offensive.would have been virtually identical, their medal inscriptions were different. Herbert Marshall's were stamped "L' POOL. R." with his Liverpool Regt no. "95990" while Robbie Robinson's were marked "NORF. R." with his Norfolk Regt no. "49085". Nine days in Base Hospital near the French coast culminated in transfer to England where he was admitted to the North Evington War Hospital, Leicester on 24th November 1918. Keith told me that although his family lived in Clitheroe, his mother came from Staffordshire, and on visits to her family when he was a boy, they would drive past Prees Heath camp, at which point his father would talk about his army experiences. The family also spent a number of holidays in Conway, North Wales, which meant driving past Kinmel Park camp near Rhyl and these journeys too triggered memories. It seems his father Herbert was a close friend of 49023 Hanson Farrar who died at Courcelles on 18th Oct. 1918 and for many years he kept in touch with Farrar's parents, George & Mary. Commonwealth War Graves records confirm that one of them, 49070 Jim Littler from Northwich, was one of those killed, and at least seven were among the wounded [xii]

Further reforms

Amalgamated with 1st Manchesters to form the 1st Battalion, The King's Regiment (Manchester and Liverpool), September 1958 [1]

The officers pleaded that the method of introducing the ‘Papists’ into the regiment was underhand and against normal practice, and that the companies were up to full strength so that the Irishmen would have been supernumeraries, costing the captains 10 shillings a week. After hearing the evidence the officers were brought in one by one and offered a deal. They would be pardoned if they now agreed to accept the recruits. Each officer refused and was cashiered. Ten days later the King conceded that the officers should be compensated financially for the loss of their commissions. But within that time 7 junior officers of the regiment also refused the Irish recruits and offered to resign their commissions. A decision was made that another court martial would stir up trouble in the army, so on 22 Sep the 7 junior officers were quietly dismissed from the army. Herbert Marshall's were stamped "L' POOL. R." with his Liverpool Regt no. "95990" while Robbie Robinson's were marked "NORF. R." with his Norfolk Regt no. "49085". The treatment of the officers had a detrimental effect on the rank and file of the Regiment. A riot was reported and many desertions. An exaggerated report reached Holland that the whole regiment had deserted. This boosted the morale of the army preparing to bring William of Orange to England. In October there was a fight between men of the regiment and those of an Irish regiment. The whole incident had far-reaching effects, and rumours of the captains being mistreated while in custody increased the ill-feeling towards the King. It was increasingly clear to him that the army could not be relied upon to maintain loyalty to a staunchly Catholic monarch.At the end of the war the 42nd CCS was a tented hospital located in the northern outskirts of Douai beside the road to Lens (see Figure 23). At that time their main activity was treating influenza cases - in the month of November 1918 they took in 1144 cases of which 60 proved fatal (5.2%).