Hello, I am new to this GreatWar list. You kind folks have been strongly recommended to me by someone on a more general UK Military Rootsweb list. We are trying to identify anything (!) more specific about our man's WWI service/unit, so that we can start to look for War Diaries.  But currently baffled by holes and contradictions in the available data. Or - new idea - might all this ambiguity and vagueness actually suggest Military Intelligence or other covert activity? What we have is: 1.The Indian Army Lists show him from mid-1915 in Indian Army Reserve of Officers as Infantry Lt and later Capt, but his Medal Roll Index card (and family tradition) simply says IARO and Royal Engineers, with no other ref number or any corps or unit or battalion.  The only other thing on his Index card is what appears to be a reference to a communication from India that listed his (two, very basic) medals - he is not in the Medal Rolls themselves, it seems.  2.Family tradition, and his gazetted MBE, suggest Mespot/Mesopotamia.  By trade he was a railway engineer in southern India, basically a civil engineer building bridges embankments etc although never a member of ICE.  So perhaps a very useful person in the REs in Mesopotamia.  After the war he was back in India, retiring to the UK in the 1930s.    3.Fortunately (but strangely - why still in the army beyond 1920?) he shows up on the MoD's list of army people serving beyond 1920 and born before 1901, which has given us a P number.  So for £30 the MoD might apparently condescend to tell us a bit more of what they might know about his wartime service. 4.Unsurprisingly, he is not in the 1916-onwards IARO recruitment index on the shelves of the British Library. 5.He is not in WO338/9, the surviving Correspondence files on officers. Does anyone have any experience of approaching the RE Museum in Kent with this limited type of vague info?   Can anyone else suggest anywhere else to look? Does anything here trigger any other ideas of how to tackle our problem? Any guidance on getting the best (?!) from the latest MoD search procedures would also be very welcome. Many thanks, and Happy New Year to all! Harriet in Wiltshire

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 15:55:00 -0000, Harriet Garfitt via GREATWAR <[email protected]> wrote: > We are trying to identify anything (!) more specific about our man's WWI > service/unit, so that we can start to look for War Diaries. But > currently baffled by holes and contradictions in the available data. > Or - new idea - might all this ambiguity and vagueness actually suggest > Military Intelligence or other covert activity? Christmas is over, Bah Humbug ... I have asked Harriett to post the name of this man. I have also not let through follow-ups asking for the name when they: (a) fail to remove the old list footer (b) needlessly repeat the entire original message Even Scrooge would be happy to do some elementary snipping of the message being responded to in the interests of making the list archive less cluttered and easier to work with. Happy New Year, Malcolm (list-admin) -- Malcolm Austen <[email protected]>