Arm Form WO.967 - Militia, conditional discharge

Army Form WO.967 must have been commonly used. It is the document by which a man's commanding officer authorised his discharge from the militia so that he could enlist in Her Majesty's (or HIs Majesty's) Regular Forces.

The example I have chosen (which is Crown Copyright, The National Archives) dates to 1878 and was part of a print run of 16,000 which had been issued in February of that year. 

Documents on Discharge

"When a soldier is to be discharged..." so begins the opening sentence on the back of this form, "the documents specified in the margin, arranged in the same sequence, will be placed inside this form." There are 18 separate forms noted in the margin but it is rare indeed to find all of these still surviving in archival files today. 

The image is Crown Copyright, The National Archives.

Army Form B.131 - Clinical Chart

I've had this image on my desktop for ages. I shudder to think of the thousands of images from soldiers' service paperts that I've looked at over the years, and every so often I come across a page that I don't recall seeing before. This was certainly the case with this Army Form B.131 which is a clinical chart, in this case reporting the temperature, pulse per minute, respiration per minute and motions per 24 hours for 20-year-old 202138 Corporal Vernon Swatman of the 2/5th South Staffordshire Regiment who was at Southmead Hospital, Bristol having had his leg amputated. Note how high his temperature rose after his operation on the 26th January.

Vernon had originally attested under the Derby Scheme in December 1915 and was admitted to hospital on the 26th October 1917 before being discharged nearly five months later in March 1918. He was discharged from the army in October 1918.

Findmypast has a huge amount of information on this man from his birth in December 1897, to school admission records, census returns for 1901 and 1911, military service record in WO 363, marriages in 1925 and 1929, an entry in the 1939 Register, and entry in Kelly's directory for Wolverhampton and finally his death in 1978. 

The image on this post is Crown Copyright, The National Archives.