Trevor LEE, a British Army Soldier's Service Numbers (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Saturday, November 03, 2012, 04:45 (4407 days ago) @ nigeldownunder

Hi Nigel,
they would definitely be different numbers given the long time period concerned and the almost inevitable change of Units.
Since long before 1920 each Regiment would allocate the next available "Regimental Number" to a new recruit, to their own system, so it wasn't unusual for two soldiers in two Regiments to have matching yet unrelated Regimental numbers. Indeed as each Regiment expanded during WW1, with Territorial & Conscript Battalions supplementing the Regulars, so the same duplicated number could co-exist within different Battalions of the same Regiment.
It wasn't unusual for a soldier to have two or even three numbers during his Army career due to transfer between Units which was commonplace, perhaps due to reorganisation from heavy battle losses, or if a soldier became unfit for "frontline" units he might be transferred into the supporting Army Service Corps for example.
http://www.1914-1918.net/asc.htm

As such huge & unforeseen numbers of men enlisted during WW1 this "system" was proving impractical, so in 1920 a new standardised system of "Army Numbers" was created, where the number clearly indicated what Unit (Regiment, Corps etc) the owner belonged to

http://www.1914-1918.net/prefixes.html
http://www.northeastmedals.co.uk/mm/army_service_numbers.htm

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Today I've been researching Trevor's early Army service and will edit this post this weekend to show my findings which hopefully will interest & help you.

atb Jeff.