Za... your mentioning Monteith and date discrepancies... this is something Steve and I discussed some time back when he noted that dates of death could be incorrectly recorded for a number of reasons... an example could be an MIA, when a decision had to be made regarding a probable date of death, so this often meant groups of people having the same date... an arbitrary decision for the sake of good order...
In that case HC, it makes the returns pretty useless! However I have got in addition to lists of officers from 1LF , lists of ORs attached, if that is any use to anyone..
What Ken and I noticed was that there were several universal dates present in some casualty returns, missing in action and POW lists. I first noticed the date 10/07/1943 in relation to the lost on Chindit 1. This was very early on in my research, probably 2008 or thereabouts. I first thought this must have been an action or engagement with the enemy, but it did seem a little too far on in time to be correct. I later came to the conclusion, that the powers that be drew up closing dates for practical reasons, making there final reports more conclusive. I finally received the evidence that this practice took place from the 13th King's War Diary for 1943. See attached image. It later transpired that the date 10/07/1943 was the last date on which a 3/2 Gurkha Rifleman had to have returned, before he was officially posted as 'missing'.
Lies, damned lies, and Officers returns statistics, Za... The Military can not possibly allow loose ends... somewhat like an accountant and the end of year books... a sad but hard and necessary fact...
