2/1st Wessex Ambulance

[DavoT]

Yes Pte WR Stile is one of those listed on page 10 "Honours and Awards"in the MM section!

While I could read through the Histpry looking for other references this query makes me think that it would be an idea to scan my copy of the History but save it as a multi-page pdf document so that it should be possible to search through it with ease to do look-ups

Note that the history contains loads of group photos of members of the unit (mostly taken in November 1918) plus poems etc

Thanks for the reply. One can only speculate of how he won the MM. Saving life under exceptional conditions or the like. Would be nice to know but he is not forgotten after all these years.

David

[Morris]

Sorry. My brain was switched off when I wrote the post above about Lt-Col Blackwood. Yes he was C/O, but the history was actually edited (and published) by Sgt W. Pearce DCM MM, with contributions from many of the men of the unit, as anyone who can read the Foreword will know. My copy of the booklet was buried at the bottom of a trunk, and I was trying to remember some details, but that is no excuse really. Clearly this will be an opportune moment to reread the whole thing!

Alfred

[rendellers]

Hi Alfred

Thank you so much

.

I have the info from CWGC re Adams in the 2nd/Ist Wessex also his SDGW and Medal Card all of which show RAMC. However as I said he is shown on our war memorial as being with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. I wonder how the change came about?

I think you may have provided the link to Highweek needed to prove it is the same person!

Many thanks again.

Lindsey

[Morris]

Lindsey

The name of unit on the memorial could of course be a slip up, but I saw this in "The Long Long Trail" about the units originally in the 43rd Wessex Division:

http://1914-1918.net/43div.htm

It got me wondering if AJ Adams perhaps originally enlisted in the DCLI in 1914 then very quickly moved to the WFA. (If he was the AJ Adams getting married in 1892, then he would have been pretty old by 1914, so he might have had a change of plan: if the rest of the Wessex Division were headed for India he might not even have been fit enough if he was fortyish.)

Thus when it came to putting names on a memorial they might not have looked closely enough at his record.

I suggest this as an uncle of mine was in the army for 20 plus years: aged 15 or so he signed up with the Devonshires, but then went to the Wiltshires and then to a "Special unit" and then to the Military Police; he was only with the Devonshires for a few weeks but it's still the name of the unit on the top sheet of his papers!

Have you ever seen his record?

Alfred

[rendellers]

Hi Alfred

I think I got excited too soon. His Soldiers Died in The Great War mention shows him as Alfred James Adams and his Medal card as Alfred J Adams. I haven't as yet found his service record and my Ancestry membership is currently lapsed. When I make my mind up whether to take out a sub to Findmypast or Ancestry I'll delve further.

Many Thanks

Lindsey

[Morris]

I have just been rereading the letters my father wrote home while he was an RAMC doctor with the 55th West Lancs Division and am wondering if anyone else coming to this thread would be interested in reading what is in the one that he wrote while he was with the 2/1st Wessex Field Ambulance. He mentions various people and places and the work they did etc.

It is a lot of text to put in a post, so I was thinking of making a blog about it and then I'd post a link to the blog, ( I'm not sure how long that will take me to organise, but at least i have already got the letters transribed)

Alfred

[Kate Wills]

I enjoyed reading the extracts you posted on anothoer thread Alfred, so please go ahead.

[Morris]

Kate,

Here is the first letter my dad sent after joining the 2/1st Wessex Field Ambulance, prior to this he had been with the 1/3 West Lancs Field Ambulance:

March 21st 1918

My dear Mother,

I am writing to you again so soon because my address is being changed. I have been transferred to a neighbouring Field Ambulance so my full title and address will now be Lieut. A.H.Morris R.A.M.C. 2/1st Wessex Field Ambulance , B.E.F., France. The people there come from the South West of England. One of the officers came out with me and the other is one of the young Watson-Williams! Any letters which have been addressed to me will be forwarded on but I expect there will not be more than one or two. Unfortunately it will probably mean at least one extra day before I get any letters. It does seem an awfully long time since I heard any news from anybody. The weather here is simply glorious and if it were not for the wretched old war it would be a perfect place to be spending spring in. The primroses are all out and of course Daylight Saving has been in full swing in this country for several weeks so we get the benefit of that. There will probably more work of various kinds to do in my new unit and I shan’t be sorry. Just now at this place time hangs very heavily on ones hands.

There is nothing for me to tell you that I can tell you although I hear many most interesting things out here. There was a huge spider in my bedroom last night but among many unpleasantnesses as devised by brother Boche one doesn’t worry much. Audrey will be interested to hear that there are heaps of cats – one “petit chat qui catche les souris” made friends with me last night. I shall be quite sorry to change my billet tomorrow. Write soon, I shall be very glad indeed to hear something from home.

Very best love to you all from Arthur.

[rendellers]

Thank you for posting this letter Alfred. I would be very interested to read the rest whichever way you decide to present it. I think your father has left behind him an invaluable West Country resource.

Regards

Lindsey

[Morris]

The next letter in the sequence was written to his sister Audrey, who was born in 1901. (My father was born in 1892 by the way)

This letter mentions aeroplanes: his family lived quite near Filton aerodrome and were very interested in "flying machines".

As regards all his kit he mentions: as a doctor both with this unit and then later when he was the MO to the 1/5 King's Own Royal Lancs he was fortunate that there was always some form of vehicle on which his medical kit was transported and thus he was able to put some opf his personal kit on the lorry or cart or whatever it was.

The Colonel mentioned is Colonel Blackwood.

The Dennis family mentioned were near neighbours in Bristol.

I'm not sure of the location from which he sent this letter as he moved so often around various places near Bethune. The History of the 2/1 WFA says that in mid March they were at Les Harrisoirs near Locon. And that they were then only dealing with casualties from the North bank of the La Bassée canal.

(When I first went abroad - with a school trip - my father got a little emotional about the fact that on my first night in France I slept at the Hotel de la Gare in Bethune that he remembered)

March 22nd 1918

My dear Audrey,

I am sending this letter to you in case you are in need of a little reflected glory and I know that any news will be passed on to the rest of the family. I have made my change from one Ambulance to another and in case you have not made a note of it my address is now and is likely to be for a few weeks 2/1st Wessex Field Ambulance, B.E.F., France. My new bedroom is in the same house as the Mess and is greatly better than my old one. I can find room to stand on both feet at once and it has got two windows and two doors. I have a big wooden bedstead with a straw mattress on top of which I put my sleeping bag and my three blankets. The place is a large farm and the mess is a great big kind of farmhouse kitchen. It is sweetly pretty – a very blue sky, very red roofs with golden yellow lichen, horses, cows, cats, dogs, rabbits, and ducks on a pond in the farmyard and great trees all around to shew up the white walls would give you something to go on with in the way of painting. A few aeroplanes overhead and a few smells underfoot and the whole picture is complete and tres bon too. Our farmhouse Mess boasts a gramophone with lots of records, books, and magazines so there is plenty to do in slack moments.

For the first time since I left London I have come across some medical work. It is quite like casualty at the hospital to be amongst drugs and surgical instruments and seeing minor injuries and illnesses again even though it is in a clean whitewashed outhouse in a farmyard. I have now got a tin helmet, so that what with it, and a gas mask, and a haversack and my two coats, and my bag, and my sleeping bag, and my bath I have plenty to carry about with me. Everyone admires my kit bag and my paraphernalia is much more handy than anybody else’s that I have come across and it lends itself to being split up. I can carry my immediate needs for a week on my back and in my haversack. If I want a sleeping bag and blankets as well I can just add that and leave my kit bag with all its contents locked up anywhere, whereas if I want it I simply carry it with me. I think the officers here from the Colonel downwards are even nicer than the last lot. Although the others were very decent they had all been together for several years and called each other by their Christian names and I always felt like a bit of an outsider. You are very lucky in having the longest letter I have yet written home but as a matter of fact there is more to write about today than there has been before. If I were allowed to I could tell you all kinds of things but of course I am forbidden. Bert Gordon (Mrs Dennis’s nephew) told me this morning that he expects to be going home on leave within the next few weeks and he offered to call and tell you any news as to where I am. Tell mother not to be alarmed if you don’t get regular letters. You never know when you will get busy and I may not be able to write for several days at any time.

My very best love to you all from Arthur.

[Morris]

With any luck Dad's letters (and maybe more) will be appearing in the near future at this blog that I have started called "Morris Medical Matters" at:

http://mormedmat.blogspot.com

Alfred

[Morris]

Hopefully the first batch of my Dad's letters can be found here:

http://mormedmat.blogspot.com/2010/08/arthurs-letters-home-before-being-sent.html

I hope I will be able put loads of dad's photos on this blog too and thereby not run out of Kb to add the odd photo here at the forum

Alfred

[Morris]

After a bit of a delay I have managed to process the text and photos for the rest of my father's letters and they are now avaialable for anyone iterested at:

Lt AH Morris's letters home 1918-1920

Alfred

[Guest Andrew Lord]

Hi if possible I would like a copy of the book re 2/1 Wessex

I am particularly interested in the period June - August 1917.

A family member John Sealey was killed in August 1917 whilst serving with them.

Thank you

[Guest SealeyJnr]

I'd like a copy too - by the way, Andrew & I must be related in some distant way, because it's John Sealey I'm related to ! That's him in my profile pic.

[Morris]

I have been away from the forum for a while so this post is partly to "bump" the thread but also to update things rather than start a new thread, reason for this is that I hope what follows will simplify things for anyone interested:

My father Dr Arthur H. Morris served as a doctor with the RAMC from 1918-1920

He wrote lots of letters to his mother during this time. She kept them, but my father did not know this till after she died in 1945. The letters came into my possession after my father’s death in 1987 and I set about sorting them out, scanning them and transcribing them, and researching the content. (The text of the letters adds up to about 70,000 words)

In order to make these letters accessible on the internet I created a blog containing transcripts of these letters plus additional information and (family) photographs to help explain who and what he was writing about.

One complication though is that a blog sorts posts into the order you make them, which means that the letters in the posts ended up sorted in a sort of reverse order. Thus to make it easier to find the letters etc in the order they were written I have made the following list, with links to each section.

Introduction

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/08/introduction.html

Part One – Letters sent in before being posted to France. Letters start on 16th February 1918

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/08/arthurs-letters-home-before-being-sent.html

Part Two – First letters sent from France. Joined 55th West Lancashire Division. Letters start on 16th March 1918

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/08/arthurs-first-letters-while-on-active.html

Part Three – Letters sent while with the 2/1 Wessex Field Ambulance (Part of 55th West Lancashire Division). Letters start on 21st March 1918

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/08/part-three-arthurs-letters-written.html

Part Four – Letters sent while M.O. to the 1/5 Battalion Kings Own Royal Lancashire Regiment (part of 55th West Lancashire Division) Letters in this section cover 20th May 1918 to the Armistice

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/09/arthurs-letters-with-15-korl-up-till.html

Part Five – Letters sent while M.O. to the 1/5 Battalion Kings Own Royal Lancashire Regiment (part of 55th West Lancashire Division) Letters in this section cover the period from the Armistice till his marriage in March 1919

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/10/part-five-arthurs-letters-between.html

Part Six – Letters written during the clearing up while in Belgium and France with 55th Division and 5th Army HQ. Letters start on his Honeymoon and end just before he is demobbed (Some letters written by his wife Margery)

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2011/03/part-six-arthurs-letters-written-while.html

Appendix One: Where my father served and with which units.

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/08/where-did-dr-arthur-harry-morris-ramc.html

Appendix Two: 55th Division Order of Battle (ie which units were in the division)

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2010/08/appendix-two-55th-west-lancashire.html

Appendix Three: Arthur’s daily movements during the final advance into Belgium

http://mormedmat.blogspot.nl/2011/05/appendix-three-arthurs-movements-during.html

Alfred