I was just looking at a spreadsheet covering my Army paybooks and some odds details - and I was looking at day of the week for Enlistment (is saddo the word?) and I noticed that while up to September 1940 its fairly random, less at the weekend but that's no surprise, from October 1940 on the vast majority of men have Enlistment dates that are on a Thursday - 82% of 374 individuals to be exact, I guess for some reason Enlistment notifications were sent to get men to report on Thursdays - I wonder if the non-Thursday men were volunteers. Not groundbreaking I know but maybe of interest, or not
My dad enlisted 15 January 1942- a Thursday . Father-in-law enlisted 30 July 1942-guess what? a Thursday too. Lesley
And for my next trick I should check bit further and see if it looks like intakes every Thursday or if it was every couple of weeks or whatever, I guess it makes sense not just to have men arriving in dribs and drabs but to group them a bit
I'm using my October 1940 start date as my get out. I had another little look and it seems to be every week rather than a batch every 2/3/4 weeks or whatever
Similarly, I was recently looking at these dates... 1st September was a Friday, 2nd Saturday etc. 9th September also a Saturday and 14th a Thursday. ;-)
May I make a somewhat cynical suggestion: These were possibly processed by Permanent Staff. Monday and Tuesday was in lieu of working Saturday and Sunday, Wednesday was sports day (still is) which left Thursday to catch up as Friday was pay day.
That is another possibility, that Thursday was admin day, but I'm not sure if that would work with it being across lots of units, so different depots/establishments - I have a few of the actual enlistment notices telling men to attend, so I'll look at those to see if they tend to tell men to report on Thursdays.
All over the place too, weren't they ? My poor Old Man had to catch the train from Surrey to Chesterfield and they sent your man from Chesterfield to Glasgow !
