I am trying to trace the grave of a soldier mentioned in the below extract from my Fathers journals and pin down some dates. His unit was 5 RHA. Bombardier George Arthur Revel was killed 24.07.42 in the first incident. Nobby Hall was killed some time between then and the Battle of Alamein. There was only one Gnr Hall RHA recorded (That I can find ,but several RA.) as killed in North Africa but at a later date. Could Nobby Hall have been Royal Signals,were they attached to RA units ? If so I guess he will be on the Signals Roll of Honour. INTO ACTION It took 12 days from landing to reach the Quator Depression, Bari Ridge and its soft sand. We dropped into a position recently vacated by the New Zealanders (Smashing chaps) to our extreme right were the Australians. We were shelled before we uncoupled our limbers and my friend Butch Revel was killed in two minutes of being in action. Our CO. Bill Norman went crackers, our GPO. Had put us in an observed position, we quickly moved to another area. In another shelling another 2 mates were badly hit as we refilled the limber. Intermittent fire, nearly caught a packet and Nobby Hall a signaller bought it. He was walking 20 yards from me and just as all of us wore shorts and slippers (and your rifle, you never leave your rifle) he was hit :- ############################# Nobby was shouting ”Barney, Barney some bastard’s on my back Help me“ There was some terrific gunfire but the Padre without a helmet stayed by his side, Nobby was later buried near there.
Royal Signals provided communications to the RHA Regiment and then within the regiment down to batteries. Batteries had their own signallers for communications within the battery. The use of the word signaller usually means a unit signaller not a Royal Signals signalman. Mike
I'm confused about your timing as [A] there were two Battles of El Alamein and Bdr Revel died during the 1st. I've thus just searched CWGC for Army HALLs from 24 Jul to 4 Nov '42 (end of 2nd battle), downloaded the 29 results into Excel, sorted them by date, hidden all but the 8 Egyptian deaths and attached the resulting spreadsheet here ( View attachment CasualtySearch_25_02_2014_08_22.xls ) with your best bet row selected - one Gnr Edward HALL (5 Regt RHA) who died on Wed 28 Oct '42 (during the 2nd battle) ... HTH, Steve
Thanks Mike. Steve nice bit of research thank you, I believe my Fathers memory let him down, His unit was with draw out of line and moved to Mena to refit and retrain under Monty's directive .( Shortly after 13th Aug.42) His notes made it appear that Gnr Hall was killed before the move to Mena I am sure Gnr Edward Hall is the one mentioned. Its the most logical explanation.
