Remembering Today Casualty Details | CWGC Warrant Officer Class I (R.S.M.) ROBERTSON, JOHN Service Number 783962 Died 24/01/1947 Royal Corps of Signals Commemorated at BROOKWOOD 1939-1945 MEMORIAL Location: Surrey, United Kingdom Number of casualties: 3417 Cemetery/memorial reference: Panel 7. Column 3. Panel from my photo collection
Wonder if this might be him: John ( Jack) Robertson 1915– BIRTH 22 MAY 1915 • Leeds, Yorkshire, England DEATH Leeds, Yorkshire, England or this one: John D Robertson 1914– BIRTH 1914 • Scarborough, Yorkshire DEATH Unknown but then there is this: England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007 Name: John Robertson Death Age: 34 Birth Date: abt 1913 Registration Date: Mar 1947 Registration district: Richmond Inferred County: Yorkshire North Riding Volume: 1b Page: 1038 ???? TD
Thanks Harkness - I was as you can see just guessing. What date is the page 33, as he died in 1947, I also note he was an RSM whereas the above is an SSM If the RA man is this man then enlisting in 1928 in the Territorials then I guess he would have been born 1910 +/- 2 years. At that time there seem to be quite a number of John Robertson's born into families in the military (22 in fact from the search results) plus all those others born and registered normally in the PRO/GRO system I also note on page 33 that they have the 'Casualty List No', I assume this is the number we would normally see hand written near to the soldiers name ??? TD
Just a general question - but what possibilities could mean that a fatality in January 1947 ends up on a memorial instead of with a burial? If his body was not recovered then whatever happened to him must have involved something like a plane crash or a boat sinking. Any other obvious scenarios that I am missing?? During the war there would have been a steady stream of personnel where the bodies could not be recovered / located but things were a lot calmer a year or so after hostilities ceased. As surmised above, if he enlisted in 1928 he would have probably only been in his late 30s by 1947 - dying of wounds received during the war or from illness / accident on land would not been an obvious reason for a memorialisation instead of a burial.
What about clearance of mines, or other explosive materials left over from the war that for safety needed to be disposed of - something goes wrong, then there not much left to bury TD
Page 33 reports him "no longer missing", so is presumably an event unrelated to his death (which does not appear in the Casualty Lists).