Still missing......

Territorial service numbers are often very telling about a man's military career. In a future blog I'll explain them more but for now, suffice to say, all Territorial soldiers were renumbered in early-1917, including those who were officially listed as missing in action.

The norm was to record a man as missing in action for a period of twelve months from the date he was last seen and then, if no information concerning him had been subsequently received, he was officially declared to be dead. This process can be seen at work in casualties from 1916, many of whom are listed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as having new (1917) service numbers, when, in fact, they had been dead a long time before the new numbers were issued.

Less common are the instances of men who had been missing since 1915 who also got renumbered. At this distance I can only ascribe this to administrative oversight by the County Associations which administered the Territorial records, although it is just possible that faint hopes were still being entertained of the mens' safety, even as much as two years after they had last been seen alive.

A case in point is that of Private Thomas Patrick Blake of the 1st/4th Battalion. Originally from Kilglass in County Sligo, he had worked for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland before moving to Dalton-in-Furness in the 1890's, there to take up employment in the local iron ore mines at Roanhead. He had joined the Territorials before 1908 when they were still the Volunteers and was the company cook for the Dalton-in-Furness detachment.

Although quite old by the time the war started (he was in his early 40's), he volunteered for service abroad and landed in France with the battalion on 3rd May, 1915. Six weeks later he was dead, killed in the abortive assault by the 51st (Highland) Division on the German lines near Festubert on June 15th. However, no-one actually saw him die and so, when the roll was taken following the battle, he was listed as one of the missing - and there were lots of names besides his.

To-day, he is commemorated on the Le Touret Memorial, along with nearly all of his comrades from the 1st/4th Battalion who died on that day and whose remains almost certainly still lie in the quiet fields to the west of Rue d'Ouvert. However, in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's records his service number is given as 200016, a number allocated in 1917, rather than his original service number, 703.

Co-incidentally, 200016 indicates that at the time of the formation of the Territorial Force from the old Volunteers he was 16th in seniority among the enlisted men in the 4th Battalion, an indication of just how long he had been serving.