I have the diary for a RASC unit stationed at Haselmere in Surrey during the early part of 1942 prior to going to North Africa for Torch in the late autumn. There is a reference to their 'Q' Stores being destroyed in a fire and 30 rifles destroyed. What exactly were the 'Q' stores as they are refered to few times elsewhere. Also, there are references to what appear to be a specific order. For instance (and there are others similar in this and later diaries), there is an entry.. Capt F Y Andrews handed order for mobilisation of unit War Office V? or U? .M 79 /Mob/5365/21(AG5MOB) dated 3/6/42 In this case the unit seems to have acted on this order a short while later and moved to a new location attached to a the 39th LAA Regiment stationed near Lewis. I guess the question is, if no copy is in the diary itself, (were they even kept perhaps for security reasons?) was a 'centralised' copy held if so are they likely to exist at say Kew and in which case where would you start to look? In some cases I have the Brigade diary under which the RASC Platoon operated (later during North Africa) and there is no evidence of these sorts of orders being retained in those. Or perhaps the order did not originate from them?
Hi, I have similar titles of orders for early 1944 for amendments to the organisation of RASC units such as the following from the war diary of 1 Coy RASC (Army Tpt): W.O.U.M. 79/Mob/6430/112 (AGS Mob) I believe they are detailed orders from the Adjutant General's Staff (AGS?) section of the War Office and that W.O.U.M. stands for War Office Urgent [?] Memorandum. I have seen them regularly referenced, but likewise never found a copy in a unit war diary. I imagine that there are copies in the War Office section files, but should say that these can be enormous and the ones I've seen cover the whole course of the war. Happy searching!! Regards Tom
Many thanks for both replies. Quartermaster store is pretty obvious, ooops, should have thought about that as we sung about it enough as Scouts! Regarding references to orders, that looks like its going to need some more detailed long term research. In the mean time I will start to note them in my master spreadsheet.
Hutt- If you are about to collect references to orders then I would think that you do NOT have a spreadsheet large enough to handle them all as they are only necessary for clerks to distribute actual orders - which are the important elements - so they were called the Army's gobbledegook - in 8th Army we had two security references 1 - BAR - which meant Burn AFTER reading - this was superceded by BBR - burn BEFORE reading...! Cheers
