WW1 service number 16406 ?

Hello all,

I'm hoping that a WW1/service number expert can help - I know that WW2 service numbers were allotted to regiments in batches but don't know if this was the case during WW1. I would like to know if it is possible to tell which regiment or corps the owner of the number 16406 was?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Skip

 

Thanks very much indeed - he is on there. Tom Sillett and this link will mean his family know a lot more than they do already. Many thanks for the very useful reply

 

Morning

Pte Tom Sillett, 8th Somerset

enlisted 20 November 1914
drafted to France on 8 September 1915
discharged from the Army on 12 July 1917 due to sickness


Regards,

Graeme

 

Would you care to please enlighten us duffers on where such info may be so readily found Graeme ?

I deduce yet another 'Burnt Documents' victim but with medal & SWB rolls here:
Sillett - UK, WWI Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920 - Ancestry.co.uk

And then to add that TNA have plenty of undigitised pieces up their sleeve as covered here:
The National Archives | Exhibitions & Learning online | First World War | Service records

TNA anecdote: My RE granddad was invalided out with an SWB and again no service record yet, apparently unlike Tom's case, I then thought myself lucky to find a 4pp MoP short copy of it in WO 364. B-u-t ... on digging further, admittedly by an amazing stroke of luck (due to its very rareness for surviving a 98% paper cull), I found his disability had been remarkable enough for his physical MoP file to have been kept in PIN 26 - heavily weeded, of course, but still running to 61 photoworthy non-blank sides extending his story to a final £20 lump sum payment in 1925. That jamminess was naturally offset by my finding the bare medal minimum for my non-invalided RAMC granddad but the moral is that you can never really tell until you've searched every nook & cranny of TNA's cookie jar for crumbs and found the proverbial singing fat lady to have already scoffed the lot !

Steve

 

Hi Steve

From the Medal ROLLS (not Index card), from 'soldiers effects' and from silver war badge, all on Ancestry,

(sorry, not effects - he did not die)


Regards,

Graeme

 

Doh ! Thanks Graeme - relying on Ancestry Library Edition to check out the images my searches turn up and not having studied an SWB roll page for many years now, I'd forgotten they contained that much detail

I don't know if you know this tip, BTW, but (because, the last time I looked, Ancestry don't flag up such closely-related images when they rarely occur) it's never a bad idea to check out the following image in case it's of the reverse side - as here:

​

front & rear​

I first discovered this at TNA whilst flipping through the physical book to photograph this page listing a great uncle of mine. Someone, presumably a clerk tasked with posting the badges, had handwritten everyone's home address there and, as you may appreciate, addresses are like gold dust to family historians ! I've not heard of any other case, so don't know how rare it is, and it may even apply to medal roll pages for all I know. It's fairly easy to miss here but you can just spot the handwriting showing through in the relatively-blank penultimate column of the front image - much easier to just go look in case since pencil, for instance, might not even show through like that.

Cheers,
Steve

 

Glad this has proved useful to someone else - cheers for the reply Graeme. Much appreciated

 

Great tip Steve cheers I didn't know about that.

Cheers Mike.

 

And thanks back Mike ... just file it under 'always expect the unexpected'