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Hi Frank, thanks for the reply.
I don't think for one minute that if you wanted to be discharged, it must have been an awful out there, that you would choose to shoot your own fingers off .. Then again many of the troopers would have suffered mental problems, so who really knows.
It''s the first time I've seen the remark of "self inflicted" on any documents.
The Evening Standard just stated he was "severely wounded".. I'm assuming that whoever updated his record for the Internet site must have been working from an original file, so it must be sitting somewhere .. Looks like I'll have spend a lot of time on the phone to clarify it, one way or tuther.

When I dig out and photograph the docs I have, I'll post them on here.

Thanks again.
Cheers Keith.

Hello Keith

Sorry for the delay in replying, my copy of the official casualty roll has been locked in a cupboard for a week (but that's another story ).

The official casualty roll states clearly "Sev wounded Self Inflicted".

The Ancestry casualty roll which you looked at has obviously edited the entry as, I guess, they assume "self inflicted" indicates a wound, but for some reason they have left out "Sev wounded" which is quite important.

I checked the record for Pte 29832 WH Grantham 6th bn IY - "Dangsly wounded Accidentally", Ancestry show just "Accident".

The providers of the Ancestry casualty roll (Naval & Military) is abbreviating original source material and in the process losing facts.

As I have my own updated and corrected casualty roll this really is interesting.

Good luck with your research.

Meurig

Hi, thanks for your help.

It sounds as though he has just done this himself then and it wasn't an accident. What a strange thing, to choose your fingers as a target.

2 questions.

Is there anywhere I could obtain a copy of the original report for the incident, which would surely have more detail. As I said at the start, I don't want to put this man down, unless I'm 100% sure of what happened.

Also, do you think if this was not an accident, he would still recieve a pension ?
Would it not have been a dishonerable discharge ?

Thanks again to everyone.

Hello Keith

I've never seen an official report into these incidents, if they ever existed they've been destroyed. As Frank pointed out his surviving papers in WO128 are unfortunately devoid of any detail.

Would he receive a pension, honourable discharge? One would hope so, but I can't say with any certainty.

Regards
Meurig

Hi, thamks again,

I thought if he'd injured himself intentionally to get an early discharge, that he would have recieved neither.

I suppose I'll just have to draw a line under this, but I woukd like to thank everyone for allmof your help.
I'll still post the paper records we have on the forum shortly, just in case one of you spots something I've missed, as I'm a complete novice at thi game.

Cheers Keith.