Military Chat

Does anyone know anything about the Machine Gun Corp?

My grandfather, Harry Schofield (b. 1885, Oldham, Lancashire) was attested on 11/12/15, posted to the Army Reserve on 12/12/15, and mobilized on 17/8/16. He was posted to the Manchester Regiment as a Private on 18/8/16, and transferred to the Machine Gun Corps on 17/10/16. Manchester Regiment number 38102, then given new number 64698 in the Machine Gun Corp.

He shipped from Bombay to Basrah, Mesopotamia (now Iraq), leaving Bombay on 27/7/17 on the ship Elephanta, arriving in Basrah on 01/08/17. He was then in No 5 Battalion MGGC **, but was posted to 128th Machine Gun Company in Amara on 15/08/17

He was admitted to Field hospital on 13/10/18 with Influenza, and was discharged to rejoin his company on 20/10/18. He embarked on the SS Egra on 26/12/18 to return to the UK, and was struck off the strength of the MGC. He was demobilized 10/03/1919. He died in 1963.

There is a gap in his records from the date 17/10/16 when he was transferred to the MGC and 27/7/17 when he sailed from Bombay

I'd love to know where he was during that time, and how he got to Bombay!

I cannot find 128 company MGC listed on the 1914-1918 Long Long Trail site

I have read the MGC site pretty thoroughly, without finding information on which companies went into 128 in Amara, but I must admit that I do not understand a lot of it!

www.machine-gun-corps-database.co.uk

http://www.machineguncorps.co.uk/

http://www.1914-1918.net/mgc.html


Can anyone suggest anywhere else I might look? Or can they spot something that would help me?


His records are on both ancestry and now FMP (including a few additional pages)



** EDIT ....... he might have been with the 123rd Company at this point, the record is a little hard to read.

Hi Sylvia,

Related information but not a direct answer.

http://www.vickersmachinegun.org.uk/units-mgc-i.htm


http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/917BKMA.pdf

Hi Kay

Thank you for those links ..............

I did find on the cgsc one that 128th Company MGC was with the 12thInfantry Brigade in Basara, enroute to Tigris Front ...... although I think Basara should be Basra. (Distribution of Mesopotamia Expeditionary Corps 18 November 1917, page 6)

That's a little bit more than I knew before! From his records, I knew that he was admitted to hospital in Baghdad on 28 August 17, and released back to duty in Baghdad on 16 Sept 17. He rejoined the 128th Company in Ramadia on 05 Oct 17 ........... so that cgsc one adds a little more to that


But it seems strange that neither the 123rd Company that he was seemingly with when he embarked on the ship in Bombay, nor the 128th Company seem to provide any more links on either the vickers machine gun site, nor on the MGC sites I've looked at!

Sylvia

I don't know whether this link is useful, but it appears to be a forum regarding the 123rd Machine Gun Company

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=209030

Allan

Sylvia

This site lists the Machine Gun Companies. 128 is not on the list

http://wartimememoriesproject.com/greatwar/allied/MachineGunCorps.php

Allan

Thank you .............

it really is quite weird

I THINK that his record says he was in No 5 Battalion MGGC, ? 123rd Company when he left Bombay and landed in Basra ............... the number of the company is very difficult to read on the war record.

But so far as I can make out from other sites, the 123rd Company was still in France in October and November 1917, when he was in Mesopotamia!

And, yes, 128th Company doesn't appear.

I did find mention of it earlier this evening from the cgsc link that Kay?? gave me above ................. but it really is only a mention. This was the first time I have found evidence of its existence apart from Granddad's war record! I think "Basara" should be Basra.

Distribution of Mesopotamia Expeditionary Corps 18 November 1917
15th Division: (HQ at Falluja)
HQ, 15th Division
12th Infantry Brigade: (in Basara, enroute to Tigris Front)
1/5th Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey)
2/39th Garhwal Rifles
1/43rd Erinpura Regiment
90th Punjabis
No. 128 Machine Gun Company <<<<<<<<
12th Brigade Supply and Transport Company



These comments that I have found in a couple of places are NOT encouraging!!

"The Machine Gun Corps is probably one of the most difficult Great War units to research.

It was one of the few “war raised” units, having no existence prior to the conflict, and suffering the ignominy of being disbanded entirely in the years immediately following.

Researchers find it hard to understand why such a vast organisation (well over 100,000 serving soldiers, plus officers, at it’s highest strength) should have left behind so few tangible records.

It has been suggested that the army “establishment” wanted to quickly forget that the Corps ever existed - it had, after all, taken away from the long established infantry regiments some of the very best and cleverest officers whose skill at arms, in mathematics, trigonometry and calculus would become such an asset in the operation of the Vickers machine guns."

and .........

"Little wonder that its demise was looked upon with satisfaction in some quarters. Conveniently, perhaps, all of its operational records, its establishments and regimental orders were totally destroyed in a mysterious fire which took place at the last Headquarters of the Corps, at Shorncliffe, near Folkestone in 1920. Not a single sheet of paper survived and even the partly written history of the Corps was lost. No attempt has been made to put right this omission until recent years.

This disaster, together with the loss of so many personal enlistment files in September 1940, during the blitz on London, has made the job of researching MGC soldiers an enigma for the average genealogist. "


:-( :-(

Sylvia,

I do hope that there will be a breakthrough in your research :-)

Allan

thank you!

Why do we never ask questions when our rellies are still alive??

Grandfather never talked about it. I only knew he had been in Mesopotamia because Mum had something that he brought back.

The worst thing is that my uncle was his only surviving child and died very suddenly in 1991. I waited a few months to write to his wife and ask if there were any Schofield documents etc that I could have. Her reply, as I've posted several times on GR, was "I didn't think anyone was interested, so I burnt everything belonging to THAT family" :-0

I was the only surviving grandchild, but she hadn't asked me, nor had she contacted my brother's children :-(

He had won medals, and I remember seeing a photo of a man in uniform on the bedroom dresser when I was young that was probably / possibly of him ............... all gone. Not to mention other photos etc

I went to http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
and did an advanced search, looking for all the words "128 machine gun" within dept ref code wo95 - WO95 is the code for unit war diaries.
If you've never seen unit WDs, they're comparable to ships' log books.
They say, day by day, what the the unit was doing, the weather, orders received from on high, etc.
Officers are usually named, but other ranks rarely are, so what you'll see is "Lt Smith wounded; O.R: 2 killed, 11 wounded" or whatever

Anyways, what I got was

Reference: WO 95/5194
Description:
128 Machine Gun Company
Date: 1916 Sept. - 1919 Mar.
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record
Context of this record Browse by Reference
All departments
WO - Records created or inherited by the War Office, Armed Forces, Judge Advocate General, and related bodies
Records of the Armed Forces from commands, headquarters, regiments and corps
WO 95 - War Office: First World War and Army of Occupation War Diaries
PART VI: MESOPOTAMIA, IRAQ AND NORTH PERSIA
15 INDIAN DIVISION
WO 95/5194 - 12 Indian Infantry Brigade
WO 95/5194 - 128 Machine Gun Company

128 Machine Gun Company
Ordering and viewing options
This record has not been digitised and cannot be downloaded.
Request a quotation for a copy to be digitised or printed and sent to you.

==================

A typical price is my grandad's unit:
447 Field Company Royal Engineers
Order and viewing options
£3.30
531 files totalling approximately 152 MB

Reference: WO 95/2821/3
Date: 1915 Apr. - 1919 May

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I would image that some (or maybe all) of the gap time was spent in training on the MG.

Hi mgnv


thank you for that information ......... I'll give it a go.


I think I'm more interested to know how he got to Bombay!