On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 21:49:49 -0500, "Alice L McVearry" <alcnwondr@earthlink.net> wrote: >One or two more searing questions, if I might. Is it possible that his >wife was not notified positively of his death until 1923? 1923 is the year >his wife Annie remarried. Unless she had been uncontactable for some reason, eg moved abroad, I'm sure the War Office would have informed her much sooner than that. The latest I could imagine them notifying her of his presumed death would be 1919, once all hope of him being taken a prisoner had vanished. The earliest might be December 1914, if he had been buried at the time. >Furthermore on James' record under the heading >Action Taken the following characters appear: >B W & V M Rel?[or ReP] (992 KR 1923) 8362 / Adl K in A, This will refer to paragraph 992 of King's Regulations, 1923 edition. Could you send me a copy of the Medal Index Card by direct e-mail? >and a Qualifying >Date of 24-10-14, which I interpret to mean 14 Oct 1924. The date is the other way round - 24th October 1914, and is the date he first arrived overseas and qualified for his medals. Since the 2nd Battalion arrived in France in mid-August 1914, this means that he was part of a subsequent reinforcement draft of men. >Would his medals been delivered to his wife? They would normally have been sent to his declared next of kin, and for a married man, the wife was normally the declared next of kin. >The CWGC does not seem to know he was married, or even how old he was. After a soldier died, the CWGC (although at that time it was called the Imperial War Graves Commission) wrote to the declared next of kin to ask for additional information to enter in their Register, and/or put on the gravestone (in cases where a body had been found). That is where the "Husband of..." and "Son of..." and the soldier's age comes from in the Debt of Honour Register. By the time they wrote, quite a lot of next of kin had moved away, and the letters were returned to the CWGC marked "gone away" by the Post Office, or the next of kin just didn't reply. In these cases, the CWGC just used the information that it had already, eg name, regiment, battalion, date of death. Forrest -- Forrest Anderson, Edinburgh, Scotland. E-mail: forrest@military-researcher.com Website: www.military-researcher.com Forrestdale Research - Military Genealogical Researcher