TOPIC:

I have this QSA Medal to John Thelwell Shropshire Imperial Yeomanry previous service with the Denbighshire Yeomanry
any one have anything on his service with the Denbighshire Yeomanry in South Africa

kind regards Philip

As a resident of Pembrokeshire, a year or two ago I did a fairly comprehensive study of the first wave of the 30th (Pembrokeshire) Company 9th Battalion IY. The first wave 29th & 30th Companies went out together and returned together, arriving back in England in early June 1901. So if John Thelwell did serve in the first wave of the 29th Company, as suggested by the note on his attestation papers, before serving in the second wave of the 13th Company, he must have been sent home early. I have just been through the two medal rolls for the first wave 29th Company and there is no J Thelwell listed. If you wanted to reconstruct what the first wave 29th Company did in SA the Liverpool Daily Post of the day tells you – 3640 Trooper Harry Hind (a Birkenhead man) wrote home at length regularly to his parents, who passed them on to the Liverpool Daily Post who published them verbatim. Below I have reproduced the start of his penultimate letter home from the Liverpool Daily Post of 10 June 1901, it then goes on for nearly another column and a half! I did not pursue Harry’s letters any further because, although both Companies went out and came back together they did not stay together whilst in SA.

Btw a John Thelwell born in Wrothenbury also served in the Great War and his service papers can be found on Ancestry. He seems to have been passed around between 3 regiments before, after a couple of years of apparently home service, he was discharged as "medically unfit" suffering from bronchitis.

Many kind thanks for your reply to my topic, it looks like i need to look more into this man
I have not found any WW1 Service papers has off yet,
but thank you for pointing this out
Thank you again
PHILIP

Phillip - I have re-found the WW1 Records for a John Thelwell born in Wrothenbury. On more carful examination he is not your John Thelwell as he was only 5ft 1inch tall and served in bantam battalions. When he attested for service in WW1 he was also the wrong age (born in 1884), although strangely when he married Georgina Florence Hughes in Wrothenbury Church in 1903 he was the correct age. I hope I did not send you off on a wild goose chase. David.