Puzzling Royal Artillery Abbreviation in Attestation for Grandfather

Hi All

Just found my grandfather's entry in the Royal Artillery attestation register just put online by Find My Past. We already have his service record and much other information about him, his name was William Charles Edward Nash (868241) and he was sent in 1938 to Singapore to join a Coastal Artillery unit which became the 9th Coastal Artillery.

What I am puzzled about is in the names column it say 'Extracted to NSRW' and in the 'Transfer to other Corps/Reasons for becoming Ineffective' it says 'C.A.A.A.'.

I wondered if C.A.A.A. might stand for Coastal Artillery ? ?, I have no idea what 'Extracted to NSRW' means.

Help deciphering these abbreviations will be gratefully received.

Best wishes


Justin

 

Coast Artillery Anti Aircraft

 

Thanks op-ack, this is really interesting as it indicates a phase of his service we had no idea of.

Best


Justin

 

Hi All

Just received this which explains the acronyms used in the records, no detour to anti-aircraft artillery. The information was kindly provided by, the custodian of this set of records:

'The personnel of the Royal Regiment of Artillery were divided into branches dependant on the roles of their battery played. The two main were “Field” (FD) and “Coast Defence & Anti-Aircraft” (CD&AA) the latter you occasionally see reduced to CDAA and CAAA when the clerk swopped “Artillery” for “Defence”.

“Extracted to NSRW” refers to his personnel record tracer card being removed from the main index and being placed in the “National Service Reserve, W Index”. This means they placed him on the reserve list for re-call due to either him still being under the age limit for active service or he had a special skill set – they W[anted] him back in the event of a war being declared.'

Best

Justin

 

Hi Justin,

Your latest post overtook my writing this but I've got NSRW = National Service Reception Wing (from "extracted to NSRW" - Google Search) - more usually as in "Records extracted to NSRW" so clearly not referring to the man himself.

Yes, I have to agree these 'attestations' are a great resource even though, being unsigned, not truly that. I grabbed my granddad's cousin's 1919 service extension one yesterday - no surviving service or pension record for him AFAICT - and so glad to find family info proving connection vs 2yr age disparity with birth registration (he'd unstereotypically passed himself off as a younger man for some reason or other) and mis-spelt surname (Army not untypically had MORISON as MORRISON). Now the 1911 census of Woolwich Barracks rings true for him and I can chase up further records for his service which I now know to have spanned nearly 22yrs (1902-1924).

And it's hard to resist commenting on the passing similarity of your granddad's name to my other granddad's - Charles William Frederick NASH - doubtless pure happenstance

Steve