U.K. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
We began searching the United
Kingdom National Archives to
try and find related information that would tell us more about Grandfather
Kennedy's switch from the CEF to the BEF, presumably after he recovered from his
wounds of May 1915 with the P.P.C.L.I.
regiment. What we found, to my surprise was a Medal Card for JACK,
something that was unrecorded in the family records on hand.
To assist others
with using the National Archives to undertake a search of this nature, I
recorded the steps in the process (for later posting to the CEF Forum), so as to
assist other researchers. This step-by-step process also provides the
links to the newly found documents.
The main site of the UK
National Archives, which contains many records of the soldiers of the Canadian
Expeditionary Force (CEF) is located at:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
The search was conducted
using the "Documents On-Line" which to me appears to be better
than a direct search of the "Medal Cards" as that came up blank in
my first attempts. The Documents On-Line are located at:
Documents
On-Line Link
I used the "Quick
Search" format, which seemed to do a better job than previous searches
using the "Advanced Search" function, as it uses the Boolean
search process. In the quick search box I entered: "Royal
AND Irish AND Rifles AND Kennedy AND Captain"
and it took me to this page: (this noted the Princess Patricia Canadian
Light Infantry):
Search
Results Link
I then looked at what
they had and it showed his relationship with both the Princess Patricia's
and the Royal Irish Rifles:
Records
Returned From Search Link
If you then order this
document on-line, you will receive a PDF file that contains a number of
medal cards in that group, only one of which will be for the person you are
searching. To provide and example, the actual file that was purchased
is shown on my web site at:
PDF
Medal Card Record Link
From this, I used the
Microsoft Paint program to crop out the actual card that I wanted for Josias
Kennedy, a copy of which is on my web site at:
JPG
of Medal Card Extract
Click on these images to see the actual files received:
Once again Michael Thierens
from the Canadian
Expeditionary Force Study Group has assisted with his interpretation of
the MIC (Medal Index Card) and provided the following:
Top right: should read Victory (Medal) and they have scribbled R&F?
on it, OFF 59 is the GRO reference where the category can be found on page 28 c?, this
is the medal roll. Ditto for British War Medal. His 1915 Star Medal has the annotation Ex Dom top right and underneath that perhaps R.I.R.? A/Capt ,R&F meaning Rank and File Roll and again a reference to the medal rolls. The date 24-10-16 is exciting...because it refers to the date he got his commission with the R.I.R! They made a proper mess of things in the right hand corner as he qualified for the Star Medal as private Kennedy, so the annotation OFF 59 is wrong.
Action taken: 15/Star, BW & VM administrative gibberish. Dup. Star issued..........one would think the Canadian one was issued, being different from the British one??? Theatre of War is clear: France and qualifying date is the date he disembarked in France and qualified for the Star Medal, only it can't be as he was already in France? Possible explanation: I think they misinterpreted 3 for a 5. Note: there is a unexplained gap between the date he was struck off strength and commissioned as an officer. Does that mean he returned to duty after recovering from his wound(s) and was struck of strength because he was transferred for an officers training? Take this into consideration:
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry 51288 Private
Imperial Army 51288 Private
Royal Irish Rifles Acting Captain
and I'd say he was transferred to the R.I.R. as a private and then started his training, acting Captain being the highest rank he obtained.
Since the time that Michael wrote this information, we have
discovered that Grandfather Kennedy was first hospitalized due to a
"Blighty" to the foot. He recovered from that and
returned to the PPCLI, but only a short time later, while in the
trenches, he started to suffer from the testicular swelling. This
lead to his travels through the Field Ambulance Stations, Clearing
Stations and eventually to a hospital in the UK for surgery.
Immediately after this he started his officer's training, which then
lead to Josiah accepting a commission in the BEF Royal Irish
Rifles. If you look at the page on the Kennedy-Stephenson
Genealogy, you will also see that cousin Thomas was with the Royal
Irish Rifles, so we expect the choice of the RIR was more than mere
coincidence.
In July 2005 we were fortunate to receive additional information, thanks to
Ian Bowbrick (host of the "Lost
Generation 1418" forum), who kindly retrieved Grandfather Kennedy's
army listings with the Royal Irish Rifles in 1917. Unfortunately, Ian also reported that A/Captain Kennedy's service records do
not appear to have survived. The details of this
find is provided on the R.I.
R. web page of this site. Direct links to the documents are as
follows:
