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Archiver > GREATWAR > 2001-05 > 0989363993


From: Eve McLaughlin <>
Subject: Re: [WW1] Help needed to interpret Discharge Certficate.
Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 00:19:53 +0100
In-Reply-To: <1e.1568485a.282830e1@aol.com>



> family rift my husband never knew his grandfather, Richard STOW,
>even though Richard was alive until 1963. My father in law would never talk
>about his father who was born in 1884. A visit to the village of their birth,
>Polstead Suffolk, revealed a plaque inside the church listing the names of
>those who served in the Great War. Amongst these was the name of Richard
>Stow, beside it the word, 'Discharged'. My father in law insisted that
>Richard had never served abroad with the derisory comment, 'He got out of it
>with varicose veins.' Since my father in law was not born until 1920 this was
>not first hand knowledge. I was also under the impression that such a
>condition would not have been sufficient to prevent active service when the
>needs were for such great numbers at The Front.

I think that a bad go of varicose veins might have made it pretty well
impossible for the man to march or stand long - so he would have been
'impaired' as far as the army was concerned. True, he may have hyped up
his condition a bit, but it must have been present for the MO to
discharge him.
This could express the slight contempt that men who served all the way
through or, more fiercely perhaps, women who men had served all through
or died, felt for those who 'got out of it' early. The well known comic
comment on men less than enthusiastic to go an be killed was ' I can't
go, I've got a bad leg'.
I suspect that Richard used his veins to dodge enlistment till he had
to - and this could be what caused family resentment.

> enlisted Essex
>Regiment, 19th Feb 1916, Walthamstow.

>and I
>cannot understand why he was so far from home,

Could have been working away from home (may even have dumped his family.
But recruiting went on generally, and he waited till conscription, so he
might have been sent to fill a gap in the Essex Regt, willy nilly.


>2. The entries for Specialist Qualifications, Medals, Chevrons and Wound
>Stripes are all Nil.

So he kept his head donw and he wasn't a keen soldier. A lot were not by
1916, having heard the horror stories of conditions in the trenches.
>3. 'Has served Overseas on Active Service' is printed in red. Surely, if
>this was not the case then this line would have been crossed through.
seems likely
>4. Date of Discharge is 10th January 1919

So he stayed in a long time, and was sent home for the last couple of
months anyway. and the trench warfare can only have made any
predisposition to variucoe veins worse.
>at Warley and the signature is
>for Officer No2 Records, this being my reason for assuming he was in 2nd
>Battalion.
>5. Reason for discharge was given as 'Being surplus to Military
>requirements having suffered impairment since entry into the service Para 392
>(16a)HR after serving 2 years 274 days with the Colours and 52 days in the
>Army Reserve.'

--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

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