Amble and WWI
 

I am in the process of remembering the men of Amble who served in WWI on the Imperial War Museum site. I would like to reach as many of the families/people who knew the soldiers, so that they can add to the stories any information and/or photos etc. Hoping that as many people will add to the stories of the Amble men to give them the permanent memorial and remembrance they deserve. Visit the site to add to a story or contact me via the Forum. Here's the link to the Community I created for Amble men: https://www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/community/1514

The Imperial War Museum is lucky. Wish I could attract a volunteer for here to do such a thing. I will do it myself at some point. Some of the work is done; Absent voters' list and casualty list.

Of course the problem area is those men not on either of the above which I estimate to be about 1,100 names, larger that the above two groups combined. Some may be mentioned in the newspapers, others in surviving service papers.

Regarding service papers, way back before there was anything online I used to pay a researcher to search for papers at the National Archives. £10 a pop. I seemed to get a percentage of Engineer and Artillery papers but Northumberland fusiliers? they always failed. When I asked the researcher why he said there are significantly fewer of N. Fusilier papers surviving compared to some of the Corps for some reason. I guess during the Arnside Street fire they were together and closer to the epicentre unfortunately.

Have a look at this page on the 'Long Long Trail' website to see just part of what was destroyed. It brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye to read that list.

I'll help if I can...
 

Yes. For some men there are no records sadly.
I discovered the Imperial War Museum site before I discovered Coquet and Coast and Amble and District. I started (1987) with remembering Robert 'Bob' Close who I had the privilege to meet when he was 93 years old and his pals from some photo-postcards he kept.
I also have some other newspaper cuttings and postcards of the time. I no longer live in Amble, so could not help you at a local level. I would be only to happy to help you with research in anyway I can. I have paid for access to Premium Records with Imperial War Museum, their project lasts for the 4 years of the Centenary.

I've just had a browse of the memorial site, quite an undertaking and well worth while, congratulations :)

Well it's nice to see my photographs of the war graves on the IWM site correctly attributed to us (not) :D


IWM

Fusilier.co.uk

Do you know, it could almost be the same photograph ;)

Another source not online yet that might help you is the Red Cross records. Not sure how that digitization is progressing. They have data collected on individuals that passed through the field hospitals and Prisoners of war (all nationalities). That could fill in the gaps on some of the missing from other sources if we are lucky. I have heard they have such things as lists of the contents of the pockets of those soldiers died of wounds. So pretty detailed stuff. If they have recorded the home town of the wounded then it will be the rosetta stone in the attempt to get a definitive list of those who served, as 'discharged due to wounds' will be a big chunk of those with no other decent records.