2/Lieut N.V. Forrest 7th RDF

[Guest hondodat1]

I am trying to find any relatives of the following individual:

2/Lieut N.V. Forrest - 7th Royal Dublin Fusilier.

He was captured in a trench raid on the night of 27 April 1917 at:

VIERSTRATT SECTOR

(ref Trench Map WYTSCHAETE 28.SW.2 from N.24.c.2.4 to N.24.a.45.77)

Point above N.24.b.1.3

According to the List of British Officer taken prisoner....by Messrs. COX & Co.'s Enquiry Office 2/Lieut Forrest was listed with 9th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusilier when he was captured. He was repatriated in 01 January 1919.

Any information is greatly appreciated.

v/r

Dat T Nguyen

CW3, US Army

[curranl]

Hello Dat and welcome to the Forum,

Your man would have been in the 9th RDF when he was captured, rather than the 7th - the 7th were part of 10th (Irish) Division and served at Gallipoli, Salonika and Palestine. He may have originally been in the 7th and been transferred at some point prior to his capture.

Tracking down his relatives could be tricky. Your best bet would be to get in touch with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association at www.greatwar.ie.

Best of luck with your research.

Regards,

Liam.

[Guest hondodat1]

Thanks for the info.

I have contacted the RDFA months ago, but they weren't able to provide me with any information. I hired a millitary researcher who was able to locate the information that I had provided above. However, they weren't able to locate any additional info. on his family or the location of his home town.

If you have any other suggestions, please send them to me.

v/r

Dat

[curranl]

Hi Dat,

I am assuming that your researcher checked for your man's service record at Kew and drew a blank.

As an absolute last resort, Forrest is a relatively rare name in Ireland. You could try contacting all the Forrests in the phone book . This assumes that the family name was carried through several generations and that the family remained in Ireland. It also assumes that your man was actually Irish to start with!!

Are there any other scraps of information from your researcher - any mention of family letters/address from Red Cross, etc?

Regards,

Liam.

[hmsk212]

The on-line medal index cards show that before he was a Second Lieutenant with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Neville Vaughan Forrest served as Sergeant 1962 in the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps

Steve

[hmsk212]

The London Gazette for 30/05/1922 shows that he relinquished his commission on completion of service on 22/04/1919, retaining the rank of Lieutenant. Maybe he returned to Ceylon after his service.

Steve

[Guest hondodat1]

Amazing !!! Thank you so much for the info. I had tried to research using the on-line medal index, but was unsucessful because I did not know his first name....until now.

A few months ago, I was at a flea market in Mannheim, Germany. An elderly lady was selling lots of British insignias from WWI. Some of the insignias were mounted on a German "field postcard". Next to the insignia, someone wrote down the last name/rank/unit of the particular individual. Of the four officers that I have paid to have their records researched, all were captured by the Germans. I recently moved to Italy so I will have more inquiries and soon as I find the box containing the items and post some photos.

My goal is to find relatives of these individuals to return these items. I bellieve that the insignias/badges will have more meaning to the relatives than to me. I am just a "temporary custodian"

Thanks again for all your assistance.

v/r

Dat Nguyen