by Lyndale » Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:25 am
Hi Judy, as promised I'm adding to my previous post. With the help of Adrian I have found out the following about 198 (H) Bty RGA during WW1. All heavy batteries of artillery were made up of three sections, each operating two large 60 pounder heavy guns. The 198 (H) Bty RGA first arrived in France on 19.11.16 and was allocated for control directly under the British Fourth Army HQ on 24.11.16 at Querrieu, 6 miles N.E. of Amiens. You would need to access the war diary of 198 (H) Bty (if there is one) to see exactly where they were based, but it would certainly be fairly nearby Fourth Army HQ. I believe the photograph you have, which says “All that is left of 198 Heavy Battery RGA” is dated about 24.11.16, because as soon as they were put under Fourth Army HQ, the battery was broken up. One section went to 12th (H) Bty RGA and one to 26th (H) Bty RGA, whilst the third (2 guns) is not documented. Because of the wording of the sign in the photograph that includes your grandfather, it seems that he didn’t go with the other 4 guns elsewhere. Your post on the Great War Forum under ‘Tuppy’ dated 3 Aug 2010 returned some very good clues, the best I think was the theory that the 19 men in the photo were support crew of 198, i.e. cooks, service staff etc and not Gunners. The GWF respondents asked you to post the photo plus the name, number of your grandfather to elicit further clues (as I did on this forum this week) but you seem to have not followed through. If you can please post the photo and the name, number of your grandfather for me on this forum, I’ll see what else I can uncover for you. Since Ancestry uploaded the surviving WW1 soldiers records in 2012, there have been many developments since. For example they are now on FMP, which carried out their own indexing (Ancestry relied on TNA old index) which uncovered an extra 600,000+ records misfiled! Plus the Western Front Association have recently saved 6 million WW1 soldier's and sailor's WW1 pension cards (Ancestry WW1 pension records are only 750,000) and your grandfather might be in those (index on Ancestry, but images on Fold.3). I have access to all these records, so do please respond and I'll go look for him. Regards Lyndale.