British Army Pay in WW2

Having worked my way through many Service Records over the years, mostly in my family before I came on the forum, I am trying to clarify the payment and listing of Officers and Men.
Officers are listed on Monthly Returns but Other Ranks are not.
O/R's are accounted for in many cases hourly or daily, particularly if listed Absent, on Disciplinary, AWOL or POW.
Likewise the listing of Embarkation Disembarkation and Command acronyms.

I came across the item below in my files which throws light onto the way that pay was monitored and controlled.
I have always assumed that the X List was created for the purpose of monitoring availability for duty and therefore pay.

Has anyone on the forum studied these aspects or have any information to clarify or confirm the rules
regarding Officers and soldiers pay.

 

Sorry I can't help you, but maybe you can help me.

I'm probably being very dim, but does the above imply that officers had some kind of 'petty cash' that they could use to make irregular payments to soldiers while overseas? If so, would that appear as some kind of additional payment on the individuals annual tax assessment?

 

Many officers and men were still paid by their civilian employers as a contribution to the War Effort.
Lt Beadle joined up as a Gunner in 1940 . He rose to Bombardier in 1941 then went to an OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit) at Catterick.
Being posted as a 2nd Lieutenant to 266 Battery 67th Field Regt RA TA
He was appointed GPO (Gun Position Officer in C Troop) after returning to the Troop after a Signals Course at Catterick.
This prepared him for future duties that he held, all of which required signals knowledge.
The following letter concerned his Income Tax Form

Letter home August 1943
My perennial headache, enclosed is this year causing me insoluble difficulties.
Apart that I never know how much money I have, out here I have no way of finding out.
So I’m returning the form with the following requests.
Will you look in my P.O. savings book and see how much interest to put down in Section 3 of the statement.
Will you look at my one and only insurance policy and see how much to put down under that heading on the back page.
Will you then forward the form to my bank with the enclosed letter.

As to my army pay, I thought income tax was deducted at the source anyway, according to the statements I used to get.
But I can’t do much about that at this distance. I suppose it all works out in the end.
I’ll make this purely a business letter and leave it at that.

 

Not sure how it worked. The notice, in #1 found in a Part 2 Order, took me by surprise but its all that I have.
The people that I share the group with have all sorts of odds and ends and sometimes still find things in boxes in their garages or attics.
Last one was a large framed photo of the Officers in the Regt taken in 1939 found behind a cabinet.
There are so many people on the forum studying such diverse and unusual (to me) subjects that I thought it worth posting the enquiry.

The more I look at Service Record enquiries the more intricate they become, as young people nowadays have much higher expectations.
With little Military experience and with all their veteran relatives now gone, they ask what us older people would have taken for granted.
Hopefully they will never live through a time when the standard reply is "Don't you know there is a war on ?"

 

I don't think I've ever really understood income tax documentation, despite listening to a few words of wisdom from Ken Dodd over the years.

As for soldiers pay, I assume they were given a weekly/monthly pay packet, even when overseas ...or was this a small 'pocket money' allowance, with the rest paid into an account?

Sorry if I'm straying from your original point, but here is my dads tax statement for 1943/44 when he would have been in North Africa & Italy.

I've no idea why he had a 2 old pence daily deduction.

 

Every penny counted, I can recall farthings in circulation for a while and half penny pieces for some years.
The "Three penny Bit" disappeared quite quickly after decimalisation in 1971.
From memory it was not unlike the new one pound coin.

BRITISH ARMY (PAY). (Hansard, 10 February 1942)

Money - The University of Nottingham

Lt Beadle on this subject:

The army can’t get enough eggs to supplement its bully and biscuits so the prices are high.
The lowest we’ve been able to beat them down to is 3 Francs which is about 4d.
A farmer where we were once billeted for a few nights, told us that they make more money in a week selling oranges and eggs than they made in six months before the invasion.
This is particularly noticeable around American camps where you pay five francs for an orange.
The Americans have so much money that they don’t trouble about bargaining which is one of the sore points of the Tommy.
We are also sore about the fact that the British Army gets only 200 francs to the pound where as the current rate of exchange is 300.
This means that we pay half as much again for everything than market prices.
The men say “If they want to stop us spending why don’t they put that difference between 200 and 300 francs to loan credit so we can draw it after we have kicked Jerry out of Tunis?”
Which is a plea I heartily agree with.

 

Stoppages: Married men were deducted an allowance to ensure that they paid for their families upkeep.
If I find more in the letters I will post it.
I think I need to look through the letters of Major Shepherd, Lt Beadles Battery Commander as I think he mentions this.
The poor guy had a problem, as this was a TA Regiment with many men from his local area.
Families receiving letters with news would talk about it in the local pubs.

 

From BRITISH ARMY (PAY). (Hansard, 10 February 1942)
Captain Cunningham-Reid (St. Marylebone)

"...It will simplify matters if, in the comparisons I am about to make between our soldiers and the soldiers of other countries, I take the minimum rates of pay. From the information I have been able to obtain it seems that the minimum rate of pay of a non-tradesman private in the United States Army who is now in the British Isles works out at about 5s. per day. The minimum rate for the similar kind of private in the Canadian Army is 5s. 2d., and in the Australian Army 6s. 9d. The British equivalent receives 2s. 6d. From then onwards the increases in each case are more or less proportionate..."​

As a Sergeant based in Britain at this time (1942), my dad's average daily rate was about 6 shillings & 3 pence.

It also surprises me that UK workers were taking strike action during WW2. How lucky were they; typically better rates of pay and not actually fighting a war!

 

Perhaps of tangental interest:
ANNUITY AND ADDITIONAL PENSION FOR HOLDERS OF GALLANTRY AWARDS
https://assets.publishing.service.g...a/file/341329/07_JSP764_Part7_July14_amd6.pdf
and still partially applicable.
Some of the Service-centric differentiations are at best quirky. I wonder how many of those entitled 'slipped through the net'?

 

Regarding the Miners Strikes the "Worcester Gunners" were a mixed bunch part from all across the country
but the old sweats came from Rural Worcestershire and the Industrial Black Country with mines and ironworks.
Major Shepherd lived in Sedgley, in the Dudley area. His in laws owned a brewery not far away.
They understood both sides of the argument.
Lt Beadle's father was with the Board of Trade monitoring coal production in the South Yorkshire Coalfields.
Miners pay was poor and often an issue. There was the constant danger of explosions and being buried alive.
A chap who trained me as an apprentice was a Bevin Boy. He said what he would rather have been in Burma
fighting in the Jungle.

Lt Beadle again:
Every night when we switch on the news, the advances of the Fifth and Eighth Armies and the forward surge of the Russians and the success in New Guinea, are counter poised by the depressing list of new strikes and arguments in the coal mines.
The remarks of the troops are not pleasant to hear. A few are sympathetic enough to say
“I don’t blame them. Wartime’s about the only time they get the chance to get what they deserve”.
But most of them say “Lot of bastards they are. Let ‘em come an’ fester in this bleeding olive grove for six months and then see how they feel.
I expect if the miners trusted their leaders, or the government or anyone! And if they had sufficient imagination to visualise the discomforts of an African summer under canvas, they would be cheerfully churning out the black diamonds for a yet to be liberated Europe.
But also I’ve no doubt that if my gunners were back in England and had never seen N. Africa, they would be just as pig headed and insensitive as the miners are now.

Bevin Boys - Wikipedia
Bevin Boys pay and working conditions (from link above)
Almost as soon as the first Bevin Boys had reported for training, there were complaints that their remuneration
(44 shillings per week for an 18-year-old) were barely sufficient to cover living costs.
Some 140 went on strike in Doncaster for two days before their training had finished.
There were also complaints from experienced miners, who resented the fact that a 21-year-old recruit
received the same minimum wage as they did.

Remembering the Bevin Boys in the Second World War

 

Despite creating something of general interest
Still not got to answer the original Query regarding Debit Balances, why the X list was created or how it was used.
Don't that let that put anyone off posting.
We will get there one day!

Pity that the MOD could provide supplementary sheets of Acronyms with Service Records
but no explanations of the X List.
What did they think people were paying for?

 

X lists (Service Records)
may fill in some blanks .....?

 

Thanks for the above Quarterfinal I've been aware of it and used it several times but it seems that Canadian and NZ differ.
No one seems to be confident that the British Army Lists are the same. I have found difficulties in maintaining context when using them at times.
I am hoping that there might be an official British Army document somewhere.
They must have had issued guides as to how they should be used by the clerks who filled in the B130's
Perhaps TNA might provide a copy now that they are taking over. Or if they cant afford it sell copies to go with the applications.

 

Help needed please
Can anyone answer the following question please.
How much did an infantry private in the British army get paid in 1943?
I seen two different pay amounts
DAILY RATE OF PAY 1940
Non Tradesman
Private – 2s on enlistment + 3d educational proficiency pay
to
Private – 2 shillings to 6 shillings 3 pence,
Any help much appreciated

 

RATES OF PAY. (Hansard, 27 February 1940)
have no comparable information because, in addition to the actual rates of pay, the soldiers here have other allowances.

§Following are the rates:

§The rates of pay in the British Army range from
2s. to 6s. 3d. a day in the case of a private,
3s. 3d. to 6s. 6d. a day in the case of a lance-corporal,
4s. to 7s. 3d. a day in the case of a corporal, and
6s. to 8s. 9d. a day in the case of a serjeant.


SERVICE PAY AND ALLOWANCES (Hansard, 10 September 1942)
The basic rate of pay of the British soldier, as stated in the White Paper, is 2s. 6d. per day, but I am prepared to say that it is 3s., because after six months' service the soldier normally gets proficiency pay.
The Australian soldier has just had an increase of pay and now gets 6s. 6d. If he goes overseas he gets an extra 6d. to compensate to some extent for the difference between the rates of exchange.
The Canadian soldiers gets 5s. 6d.,
the New Zealand soldier 7s. 6d., and—dare I mention it?—
the United States soldier, of whom there are many serving in this country, gets 10s. a day.


PAY AND ALLOWANCES (Hansard, 2 March 1944)
The last Debate took place, I believe, on 10th September, 1942, when the Government offered 3s. 6d. a week increase of basic pay for the soldier. I do not think the House was greatly inspired by that 3s. 6d. a week, nor by the additional 1s. given on the children's allowance.

The basic weekly pay of such a soldier is 21s. a week, from which he makes a compulsory allotment of 3s. 6d. per week to his wife, leaving him with 17s. 6d. a week basic pay.
His wife is given 21s. 6d. a week plus the 3s. 6d., making her total allowance 25s.
Then a further 18s. is given to the wife for the two children, 9s. 6d. for the first and 8s. 6d. for the second, making a total family allowance for the wife and two children of £2 3s. a week.

 

Hi thanks for info I am trying to find out how the amount was reached when my uncle was killed on 10 Jan 43 - see uploaded doc, war office. I understand the Post War Credits was 6p per day of service and he had 1 year 4 days service.

 

Also, after his death his mother was allotted 7 shillings per week - for a set period, any explanation of this would be welcomed, letter she received from York is also uploaded.

Also, as a married man had to allot 3 shilling sand 6 pence to his wife, what amount if any did unmarried guys have to send home.

 

I'm not sure if this helps, my father was with the RHLI in active combat and his pay was $1.50 per day.

 

All I know was that "The Yanks are over paid, over sexed and over here."

 

Haha! My Dad was Canadian & survived Dieppe.