After seeing Catherine Ingram Smiths comments on W H Harris (surprised at lowly rank of Deck Hand for an OC, Ive done a little analysis of our boys: Civilian 6 Enlisted 28 Lieutenant 352 Captain 209 Major 57 Colonel 35 General 5 *Or equivalent RN, RFC/RAF, Surgeon, Chaplain ** Lieutenant, Colonel and General sub-grades aggregated Of the Civilians, five were medical volunteers (eg. Red Cross) and one was a passenger on the Lusitania (sunk by U-boat, NY to Liverpool). I find the enlisted mens stories often more interesting. Harris, for example, at 44 would have been too old to go to officer training as a subaltern and was actually in the Mercantile Marine Reserve rather than in the armed forces. It may just be that he wanted to help and was one of those yachty-types! I visited H K Damants grave. He was an Air Mechanic Second Class which sounds very lowly but when I looked into it, thats the non-rank you carry in the (newly-formed) RFC until you pass your exams to become the equivalent of a Private: Air Mechanic First Class. The RFC would have had Pilots (all officers) and Ground Crew (largely enlisted). Damant would have been in employment for 6-8 years before WW1 and maybe he just liked planes and worked in engineering. Two of the enlisted men were in the Honourable Artillery Company. You cant commission into the HAC and to this day its Troopers (Privates) are officer-quality. It is the oldest regiment in the British Army and an HAC Trooper or Lance Corporal would have been a perfectly respectable rank for an OC. After all - I was one once! It will be fun to piece together the backgrounds of the other 24.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 16:40:26 +0000
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