First World War casualty Frank Dent (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Saturday, April 05, 2014, 03:55 (3885 days ago) @ HarryBrook

Thanks Harry for your kind words and fair comments. Yes, as I understand it about 1/3 of the British who died in WW1 were killed not by direct enemy action, but from accident or more likely illness & disease. This sounds terribly high but was actually a great improvement over the campaigns of a previous generation.

From your experience can you please clarify how reliable the Medal Cards are when it comes to their use of "K.I.A" and "D.O.W" - where these comments appear are they considered to be accurate in the majority of cases, or does it appear the Cards contain errors when compared to other sources such as the Books you mention ?. I wonder if such confusion has happened in this case of poor Frank Dent ?. eg perhaps "K.I.A" was sometimes used in the first instance as a "cover-all" if precise details wern't known, only to be corrected later if & when possible ?. Unfortunately I haven't seen his Medal Card, but from the first posts of this thread it appeared that Frank had definitely Died of Wounds received, I assumed info gained from his Card, hence my attempt to explain the likely circumstances in which he was wounded.

Thanking you for any more clarification you can offer wrt the Medal Card records.

On a slightly different note, I've just recalled some time ago we discussed the Roll of Honour plaque from the old Double View School in Cinderford. I think you said you hoped to get access to photograph/transcribe it sometime ? If I'm right in this, were you able to do so at all, perhaps as part of this site's WW1 Database researches ?.

Thanks again, Jeff