TOPIC:

Sorry couldn't put everything I know on here at one time as I didn't want to take up too much room.

I have a diary of one of the town's doctors from the period 1898 - 1922 about his visits to various people and comments about them and their treatment.

Under the date of 15th January 1900 he has written -
"Went to Elting Green to visit Gunner Jones's wounds - which are progressing well - he should be perfectly well in a couple of weeks. However, he's suffering from the usual doom and gloom all these soldiers from SA seem to have if they haven’t got enteric fever as well. Hopefully he'll get over it soon - I have left instructions for him to be taken out more often to town events and said to him I expect to see him in town in a few weeks. I hope he rallies for there is nothing medically wrong with him now."

Hence my search for more military records on him - I've got this and a few letters to the papers in opposition to people criticizing why more soldiers didn't volunteer to go to the front. It shows the other side of a story which is told by Percy Goddard, Dereham's first volunteer who was highly praised when he came back wounded and then returned to enter the Police Garrison over there. Don't worry I have all Percy Goddard's life history etc. completed.

Thanks and take care, Kitty

Hi
I can now finally add the last piece to this soldier - having consulted several locals who's families have lived on Etling Green for over 150 years, I found out that there was a family of Jones' who lived there but they were transported to the Americas.

This then added to my confusion as I wondered how Charles L Jones could possibly be related to them. So I began searching again and started at the 1841 census and even though there are no address or town listings on them I've found the link by going forward from it. Mary Ann Jones one of their daughters and was in fact the lady who looked after the wounded Boer War soldiers in town who had no home to go to. She never married but had a cousin who lived in Wellington, Shropshire - so it begun to make sense - at last!

Then to add to this, yesterday a relative of Sergt. Robert Bowers contacted me to find out if I'd found a photograph of his relation (he is one of our cenotaph heroes from the Great War who had been in the forces prior to it) - I hadn’t but I had found his Boer War record - on FMP - fairly easy as the papers said he'd been awarded the DCM whilst serving there. Having found the record I was surprised to find that he wasn’t just only in the same unit – exactly the same too – the 66th Siege Battery, RFA, as Gunner Charles L Jones but they also had identical clasps to their medals.

As if this wasn’t enough this morning his grandson came round to mine and with him brought some of the letters they had written to each other whilst Charles was recuperating in Etling Green. Evidently they had been best friends whilst they were serving in South Africa.

This just goes to show that no matter how long you’ve been doing something (almost 50 years now on my local town’s history) you can find out new stuff all the time.

Brilliant, that's this soldier finally finished – something I thought I’d never be able to do.

Incidentally if anyone wants to know of other C. L. Jones soldier's I've collected quite a few records - just to rule them out from being the one I was looking for of course - but other folk are welcome to the info. The one from Macclesfield, another from Gt. Yarmouth (C. W. Jones); Claude Leonard Jones from the Suffolk Regt. and finally a naughty C. Jones from Kentish Town.

I am so glad that I could finish the research on this soldier as my maiden name was Jones and Kitty is short for Catherine – so that would make me a C. Jones too.

However, I've still got some Derehamites to sort out properly so will be posting again shortly with Dereham Soldier Number 3.

Thanks and take care, Kitty