TOPIC:

Hi
Wondered if anyone can help or if it is possible to find out which section of the 78th battery royal field artillery,my great grandfather served during the boer war.
His name was Edward farrow born 1868,and joined in 1888 and served until 1903 as a driver.
Army no was 59575.
If anyone can help or point me in the right direction would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Good heavens, that is a most unusual question to ask, normally, an RFA battery was a single entity, in that it fought together without being spit up, notwithstanding, batteries were split on occasion, in particular, to provide support for individual columns.
I see as a reservist with Number 6 Depot, he did miss out on operations with the Natal Field Force, interestingly, WO100/308 suggests some service with 39 Battery as well.

Hello

It would only be possible to answer your question from the Battery Digest Service - on the off chance he is mentioned (very unlikely), or you have a letter from him stating which section he was with - which you don't appear to have.

Why do you want to know which section he served with?

Regards
Meurig

Hi Frank
Thanks for reply,I have seen some service records of his, that confirms the 39th battery and 6th depot but don't really know enough about subject,was the 6th depot in south Africa and where was it.?
The reason for my strange question was I recently came across a photo posted on a forum entitled R section 78th battery RFA captured De watts gun.
There are around 20 men in the picture and one of them I am 99% sure is my great grandfather when placed next to the only surging picture of him in later years,so really by finding out if a R section did exist and he was in it,it would tie up a bit more with the photo.
Any way once again thanks again for replying and helping out.
Best regards Dean

Hi Meurig
Thanks for reply,I have just posted a reply to Frank regarding why the relevance to knowing the section,it's a bit of a shot in the dark!
I am relatively new to forum so hopefully you can read my reply to Frank and it will explain.
If not I can post you more information concerning question.
Many thanks for taking the time to reply.
Best regards Dean

Hello Dean

Photographs - as a good a document as any. Great story.

"R section" would be "Right Section", the others being "Centre" and "Left".

To establish your gt-grandfather's likely presence in the photo we need to know three things:
1. Date De Wet's gun was captured (can you post the link to this picture)
2. Dates your gt-grandfather was in SA - do you have his service papers, or medal entitlement?
3. When did he move to 39 btty - medal roll may give a clue

78 btty have about 100 pages in their Digest of Service (aka "War Diary") which is very good (some batteries only wrote two pages) for the War. The Digests of Service are in the Royal Artillery Library which is now shut to the public. I have all the Digests of Service but due to copyright restrictions cannot pass them on.

Regards
Meurig