Rifleman Ernest Weaver, King's Royal Rifle Corps

3 Mounted medals in great condition, luckily his service record survived and tells his full story. 

Three medals, one life

Ernest Weaver was a Camberwell munitions worker who cast bullets and shrapnel for three years, then went to war himself at 31 and came home safe in 1920. His British War Medal and Victory Medal record that service. His Defence Medal hints that, twenty years on, he answered the call again.

A Southwark man

Ernest was born in the parish of Southwark, then counted as part of Surrey, around 1886. He gave his age as 29 in December 1915, and as about 31 when examined in 1918.

By the war he was married and living at 35 Astley Street, off the Old Kent Road in Camberwell. It was a working district of terraced streets, factories and railway yards.

Casting bullets and shrapnel

On 6 December 1915 Ernest attested at Camberwell for short service, "for the duration of the war". This was the Derby Scheme. Men signed up voluntarily, were sent home the next day to the Army Reserve, and were called up later in groups by age and marital status. His casualty form still carries a group number in the margin.

He was given the regimental number 58835. Asked his trade, he answered: casting bullets and shrapnel. That one line explains the next two and a half years.

Skilled munitions workers were too valuable to send to the trenches. Shells and bullets were in desperately short supply, and men like Ernest were kept at their benches. His later call-up papers still carry a "Munitions" stamp from the Lambeth Town Hall recruiting office.

Called up, 1918

The spring of 1918 changed everything. The German offensives of March and April cost the British Army enormous numbers of men, and protected workers were combed out to replace them.

On 22 May 1918 the Lambeth Town Hall recruiting office wrote to Ernest at 35 Astley Street. He was to present himself for a medical examination at 9am on 29 May at Camberwell Baths, Camberwell Green. A second notice warned him, as a man of the Army Reserve, that he would soon be required to rejoin "with the Colours".

National Service Medical Board No. 5 at Camberwell passed him Grade I, fit for general service, marked with a bold letter A. On 22 June 1918 he was mobilised through Whitehall. His attestation was approved at Kingston-on-Thames on 24 June, and he was posted to the King's Royal Rifle Corps.

Rifleman Weaver at Sheerness

On 25 June 1918 Ernest joined the 6th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps, at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey. The 6th was a reserve battalion that trained recruits and sent them on as drafts to battalions overseas (Great War Forum).

In a rifle regiment a private was called a rifleman, and his papers soon record him as "Rfn". At Sheerness he was inoculated against typhoid on 26 June and 6 July, and vaccinated on 2 July.

He had almost four months of training. Then, on 22 and 23 October 1918, he was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force and posted to the 18th Battalion.

The final advance in Flanders

Ernest joined a battalion with a hard past. The 18th (Service) Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps, known as the "Arts and Crafts", was raised at Gidea Park in Essex in 1915. It fought on the Somme, at Messines and at Ypres, and served in Italy. It was almost wiped out in March 1918, losing around 490 men in a few days near Beugny, and was rebuilt (Wikipedia).

By October 1918 the battalion was part of 122nd Brigade, 41st Division, pushing the Germans back across Belgium. It had just lost heavily at Geluwe, near Menin, so new men like Ernest were badly needed.

The weeks around his arrival were busy ones:

• 19 October: the battalion crossed the River Lys to the edge of Courtrai.
• 21 October: it crossed the Courtrai to Bossuyt canal by a damaged bridge and advanced towards the Scheldt.
• 26 October: patrols found Avelgem abandoned and secured the bank of the Scheldt.
• 31 October: back into the line, under shellfire but making no more attacks.
• 11 November

  November 1918 the 41st Division was chosen to join the army occupying Germany. The 18th KRRC marched east through Belgium, spending Christmas at Villers-le-Bouillet.

  On 9 January 1919 it took the train from Huy across the Rhine to Bensberg, east of Cologne. The riflemen were billeted in the villages of Hoffnungsthal and Volberg and guarded the Cologne bridgehead, taking over the outpost line on 14 February.

  Later in 1919 the battalion became part of the Light Division of the new British Army of the Rhine. As older soldiers went home it was topped up with younger men. Ernest's casualty form shows he had home leave in the UK from about 5 to 19 May 1919.

  Home again, 1920

  The 18th Battalion was disbanded on 3 February 1920. Ernest's statement of services mentions 

  Winchester, the KRRC's regimental depot, in late 1919, which suggests he came home through the depot.

  He was discharged on demobilisation on 31 March 1920. The army counted his service as 1 year and 283 days. He went back to civilian life in south London, aged about 34.

  The Second World War and the Defence Medal

  When war came again in 1939 Ernest was in his early fifties, too old for the army but not too old to serve. His Defence Medal shows he did.

  The medal was awarded for service at home, usually three years of it. It went to the Home Guard, but also to ARP wardens, the Civil Defence ambulance and rescue services.