The Royal Sussex Regiment - service battalions

This post will look at numbering in the Royal Sussex Regiment service battalions between August 1914 and August 1916. September 1916 saw a lot of movement between Sussex Regiment battalions and indeed transfers to Sussex Regiment battalions from other regiments and I'll deal with this month in a separate post. I have already detailed pre September 1916 enlistments into the South Down Battalions: the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment.

As I mentioned in my post on the 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Royal Sussex Regiment, men enlisting for service with the regiment during wartime only were given numbers from a new series beginning at 1 and prefixed with the letter G/ for General Service. In fact it is not unusual to see some early Sussex Regiment attestation papers prefixed with a GS/.

By the end of September 1914, numbering had exceeded 3800 (G/3827 joined on 26th September) and by the 30th October it was in the 4100s. The following sample army service numbers and corresponding joining dates continue this series:

G/4158 joined on 2nd November 1914
G/4780 joined on 5th January 1915
G/5185 joined on 19th February 1915
G/5546 joined on 31st March 1915
G/5632 joined on 20th April 1915
G/5708 joined on 2nd May 1915
G/6980 joined on 1st June 1915
G/7403 joined on 2nd July 1915
G/7757 joined on 15th August 1915
G/7943 joined on 27th September 1915
G/8002 joined on 23rd October 1915
G/8047 joined on 1st November 1915
G/8462 joined on 7th December 1915
G/8548 joined on 8th January 1916
G/8780 joined on 22nd February 1916
G/9202 joined on 1st March 1916
G/10552 joined on 5th April 1916
G/11558 joined on 11th May 1916
G/12746 joined on 13th June 1916
G/13449 joined on 1st July 1916
G/13678 joined on 8th August 1916
G/14101 joined on 12th September 1916

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I'll deal with September 1916 properly in a future post.

The photograph on this page shows men of the 10th Royal Sussex Regiment in England in 1915. G/4469 Private Roland Gilbert of Chailey, Sussex, sits on the front row third from left. His number indicates that he must have joined the regiment in late 1914 or early 1915. Read his story by clicking the link.