Additional Information: Percy Carmichael Clarke, Emma Anna Piper, and Egerton Clarke

I've had some exciting information arrive this week, some of it from in and around Watford, England. Let's start with the thread I began receiving first.

A comment on the article "Mr. Egerton Clarke: Meet the Maternal Family" was recently posted by Lex Tucker on Tuesday, 1 November 2011. He wrote:

Frederick Ebenezer PIPER and his wife Mary nee MEACHER had:
Mabel Agnes 1874
Charles Frederick ca 1876
Horace Francis ca 1878
Albert Lucius Meacher ca 1880
Guy Reginald 1882 @ Hythe.
Fredk's wife seems to have been around 11 years his senior. He was 21 to her 32 when they married at Ivinghoe in Bucks in 1873.

According to the 1901 English Census, Mabel, a widow whose 6 y.o. daughter, Dorothy EDWARDS, was a 'British subject born in France' had married James ROY, a 43 y.o. widower. His 16 y.o. daughter Marjorie was also part of the household in Hove, Sussex. James was a 'manufacturing confectioner's manager' and may have had something to do with the fact that Albert PIPER, who was single and lived in Worthing, was a 'confectioner's agent'.

Horace and Guy were living with Charles (head of the household) and his wife in Teddington, Middlesex. Horace was a confectioner (James again?) and Guy a florist.


Thank you very much for the information, Lex!

While the above does not directly play into our story of George Mills, it does flesh out more of the the family history of George's dear friend, Egerton Clarke. If I am reading it all correctly, Egerton would have had some 5 step-siblings from his father Percy Carmichael Clarke's first marriage to Mary Meacher.

What we do not know is how close either Egerton or his mother, Emma Anna Piper Clarke [pictured, right, with Egerton], may have been—if at all—to the children of Percy Clarke's first marriage. The last child of Percy's first union was born around 1882 at Hythe, while Egerton was born in 1899 in Canterbury of a different mother, Emma Piper.

While that difference between half-siblings was some 17 years (1882-1899), Hythe is only some 20 miles from Canterbury, and both just across the Channel from France, where Percy passed away at Dinard in 1902.

It is also notable that Hythe is just a handful of miles west of Folkestone along the coast, the latter being the locale in which Egerton Clarke penned the dedication to his first book of poetry, Kezil and Other Poems, while residing at The Grange in June, 1920, after having served in the First World War.

Egerton clearly had step-kin in the area. Does the fact that he wrote that dedication in Folkestone have more to do with the fact that Hythe was part of his family's geography, or the fact that he had just served in the Army Pay Corps, with nearby Dover the location of a major WWI pay centre where friend George Mills had been stationed after Egerton's medical discharge from the service in 1918? Dover is just over 5 miles to the east of Folkestone.

Much of this requires speculation. Does having a family member born in Hythe make the military connection between Folkestone and Dover somewhat less meaningful? It's difficult to be certain, but we do know that Egerton's mother, with whom he was never truly close, seemingly was out of the picture and residing with her family in Hertfordshire at the time.

Had there always been a deeper connection with his father's family, especially during the time he attended St Edmund's School in Kent, than we previously have suspected?

This new information isn't earth-shattering, but in light of wondering about the relation between Egerton and George Mills, as well as the relationship between Egerton and his mother and her family, it is extremely interesting.

I forwarded Lex's comment to Janine LaForestier, whom you may remember being Egerton Clarke's granddaughter. She already has provided a wealth of information regarding the family's history.

Her reply, dated 3 November:

This is wonderful. I have photos of a couple of Pipers - always wanted to know the approximate ages of these folk. They certainly look ancient - I love this puzzle. Wonderful.

All well at this end - still going through boxes of books.

Funny you should write - I was reading some of Egerton's poems this morning. One he wrote for my mother when she was three.

Also
Came across a photo of a man in uniform - on the back it states "Therese's fiance Lancashire Fusilier - killed in battle 1916-17. So my grandmother was engaged before she married Egerton. There must have been a tremendous shortage of men her own age - hence the age difference between them.


On the radio I recently heard an author, Adam Hochschild, talking about his upcoming book, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 [left]. In his discussion, he mentioned the difficulty of having a generation of men in its collective prime winnowed down to a relative few due to wounds, amputations, shellshock, and death. It must have impacted the societal pas de deux of lovers in post-War England to a great degree, thereby affecting the eligibility of George Mills and Egerton Clarke, both veterans!

However, I also came upon this message in my mailbox just this morning, dated Saturday, November 05, 2011 7:11 PM:

Dear Harry
I have been forwarded all the information you have discovered about my family.
I know you have been discussing your research with my cousin Janine in Canada. I am another granddaughter of egerton and live in England. although I spent eight years in California I have been brought up and live very close to a great deal of the places mentioned our nearest town is Watford and I went to school in st Albans and walked past the flat where Emma piper (my great grandmother's) sister lived without to this day knowing of the connection. egerton and Emma did not ever spend time in work houses the institutions referred to are schools in today's language would be private schools for the well to do. Emma was living in France after her husband Percy died . there are pictures and I have Percy's bible. there is a lot of research that I have done on the genes reunited website if you are interested. egerton was well educated and in the class system that is still prevalent today would have been considered upper class. the class ranking is often accompanied by a lack of money either money lost or a lifestyle indulged in beyond means. the class being defined by social circles and education. egerton's became a publisher and the publishing career then passed on to my father.

I am curious to know why you have such an interest in this family and have spent so much time researching it. I think it is difficult from such a distance and a different culture to interpret some information and language and meanings change over time.
kind regards
Camilla Andrews


Great information! Thank you so much, Camilla, from whom we have heard before! We now know for sure that Emma Anna Piper Clarke, Egerton's mother, failed to be tallied by early 20th century census takers because she had remained abroad in France after Percy's death! Perhaps that was natural: Emma had married a much older man and, after his passing, still may have had much to learn about herself as both a person and a woman.

We found reference to Emma in French journal from the year 2000 regarding a man with the surname "Lawrence," but it seems that would not have been author and prolific poet D. H. Lawrence, who did not reside in France until after World War I. By 1917, Emma clearly was a resident of Bishops Stortford, Herts.

[The addresses referred to in the journal article mentioned above are part of the region of France across from Dover, Folkestone, Hythe, and Canterbury (Go to: http://www.webcamgalore.com/EN/webcam/France/Veulettes-sur-Mer/5624.html).]


I feel, however, I must have offended Camilla more than just a little, and for that I apologize. My suppositions—that there may have been work houses involved in Watford and Blean—arose simply because of the fewer facts available to me at that time.

Egerton attended school in a town with a workhouse, Blean [right], which for purposes of the 1911 UK census was the location of St Edmund's School, not Canterbury. Citing Blean as the location of his residence without the census documents having named the "institution" (not "school") itself, I will admit, made me wonder where Egerton might have been housed and/or educated and under what circumstances, especially given that he recently had been orphaned.

In addition, the school's website describes its history thusly: "The name of the school was changed from the Clergy Orphan School to St Edmund's School in 1897." Egerton's circumstances as an orphan of a clergyman (and father of over a half-dozen children), combined with Egerton's attendance at a school that had recently been so charitably affiliated (the school was funded by the Clergy Orphan Society), never led me to believe that he was reared in an institution that was actually "in today's language… [a] private school for the well to do."

In addition, I also was misled to a great degree by this information: "1902 THE CLERGY ORPHAN CORPORATION, Under the Patronage of his majesty the King. President - The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Vice-President - The Earl of Cranbrook. Treasurer - E. Lonsdale Beckwith, Esq.

"These Schools, founded in 1749, are for the absolutely free maintenance, clothing, and education of the Orphan (fatherless) Children of the Clergy of the Established Church of England and Wales.

"3228 children have been admitted to the benefits of these Schools which now contain 240. Of this number 132 boys are being educated in St. Edmund's school in Canterbury."

Admittedly, I laboured under the assumption that young Egerton must have been one of those "absolutely free maintenance, clothing, and education" boys, and humbly propose that could have been a somewhat logical assumption, at least from my position at "such a distance and [from] a different culture."

Given the information to which I had access, St Edmund's [left] appeared to me then to have been a charitable school for orphans of men who typically would not have been wealthy. And given what one reads in fiction from the era (at least in classic and popular English literature available to us here in the States), one would assume that even beneficed Anglican clerics who were not fortunate enough to have come from wealthy families before taking their Holy Orders, and who subsequently sired more than just a couple of children, would not have been considered widely as having been 'well-to-do.'

I guess that's why they call it fiction, though, and I stand corrected if I have misconstrued all of the above.

From a purely personal perspective, I will add that one of the greatest 'perks' gained by doing this research is, indeed, gaining some insight into the culture of my ancestors, from "such a distance and a different culture." Hence, I am obliged to anyone who 'sets me straight' in these matters. It's all a work in progress!

Finally, to satiate Camilla's curiosity, my primary interest in her family is in regard to George Mills, a man no one seems to recall very much about, but who was well-educated (as was Egerton Clarke), who wrote children's books (as did Egerton Clarke), was the son of an Anglican vicar (as was Egerton Clarke), who had served in the Army Pay Corps during WWI (as did Egerton Clarke), who had health-issues in the service (as did Egerton Clarke), who later attended Oxford (as did Egerton Clarke), who did not earn a degree from Oxford in the end (as Egerton Cklarke did not), who became a devout Catholic against his family's wishes (as did Egerton Clarke), who never wrote another book after publishing religious texts with Burns, Oates, and Washbourne in the late 1930s (as did Egerton Clarke), and whose health fared poorly during the Second World War (as did Egerton Clarke's), although Mills survived the conflict.

Therefore, I truly hope it does not seem unnatural for me to wonder and wish to learn about the life of a gentleman acquainted with, and who had so very much in common with, George Mills. And if reading any of the suppositions I have made along the way—in the midst of this research—has offended anyone retrospectively, for that I do apologize.


Next time, there'll be more word from Watford, England. However, then it will regard conirmation of a former place of employment for George Mills and a potential link to his teaching career in Glion, Switzerland. See you then!

1918: TRADE PROFICIENCY and a CERTIFICATE.

At this point, our trip through the WWI file of Pte. George Mills is nearly at an end. Reviewing some key dates, we know Mills joined the British Army on 15 January 1916 and was added to the Army Reserve on the 16th.

His service actually reckoned from 11 July 1916 when he was posted to the Rifle Brigade at the Rifle Depot in Winchester [pictured, left; a place Mills must have liked, aesthetically]. On 30 January 1917, Mills was appointed an unpaid Lance Corporal. Things, one assumes, must have been going well..

On 11 April 1917, exactly 8 months to the day after his posting, Mills was transferred to the Army Pay Corps at Buckland near Dover. The transfer is marked "on probation." Five days later, George, once again became a Rifleman (Private) and was officially transferred to the APC, dated 16 April 1917. What it meant to be "on probation" is not recorded.

Mills lasted just two days shy of 17 full months in the APC when he was "permanently and compulsorily transferred" out of the Pay Corps, which at the time was starved for able bodies to work, on 9 September 1918. We also know that was seen as someone who would not "ever make corporal," as was written in a review on his 16 April 1918 APC anniversary, and was then noted in writing as being "not much use" on 15 June 1918.

The Army Form W 5010 he carried with him to the O.C. Eastern Command Transfer Centre at Prees Heath [parade grounds pictured, right] designated him as a "clerk found unsuitable ," but also recommended that suitable duty for George would be "clerical work." Apparently just not clerical work at the incredibly busy Army Pay Corps!

The date of dispatch to his new assignment, "A.S.C. Supply List, Prees Heath, Salop," was 11 September 1918: The Army Service Corps.

Let's go to the paperwork to find out what happened next to a man who after a year and a half was found so utterly unsuitable as a clerk that he was permanently transferred out—obviously using a very special logic—to find work elsewhere as a… uh… clerk, seemingly the only military task suitable for him.

What does one do if one cannot find work, or doesn't like one's current employment? Education! Training! We'll find that's exactly what the army must have had planned for young George Mills, Private, failed clerk, and fatigue man.

There are two documents in his file that let us know exactly what Mills did immediately after posting to Shropshire on11 September 1918. They are obviously carbon copies of originals that probably went with him to his next assignment. [I have enhanced/darkened these images in PhotoShop, but there are still tricky parts for one to decipher.]

The first document is a stencil duplicate [I think we called them "mimeographs" when teachers gave them to us when I was a kid], probably on card stock given its relatively small dimensions and good condition. The stock would explain why some information was inked in advance—pressure through an upper layer of card stock wouldn't have worked very well with carbon paper. However, only the easy-to-read original, probably carried in a soldier's own hand to his new assignment, was likely to have mattered much in the grand scheme of army offices, circa 1918.

The first document is entitled "TRADE PROFICIENCY. CLERK." It announces that Mills had been trained at the military base [pictured, left] S.C.T.C. Fovant, at the village in the south of Wiltshire. Fovant is noteworthy because of the large-scale regimental badges that were carved by soldiers in a nearby chalk hillside, many of which have been restored today.

This item [pictured, below right; click to enlarge] reads "12892. I certify that Mills Pte. G.R. has been tested and proves himself a ………………….. clerk." The carbon handwriting in the blank is barely legible, but it appears that it may possibly be the word "first." I wouldn't wager much on that, however, and think it is far more likely to be "fair," beginning with what looks like a script "f." [It is unclear why that particular word, however, wouldn't have been capitalized as are the rest.] The "12892" is George's old APC serial number.

The next lines read: "Knowledge of Shorthand ………………..," and in the blank is written what appears to be "Theory only," and "Knowledge of Typewriting …………………," in which quite clearly is written "Fair."

We saw a bit of similar information last time, while looking at Army Form B 278 (List of Transfer Documents). Someone going through George's file had jotted the notation "G/ Theory/Fair" on that document. We see "Theory" and "Fair" in the preceding paragraph, those words having appeared in the second two blanks of the proficiency card. Is the capital "G" from yesterday a clue to decoding the word in the first blank today? Does it actually read "proves himself to be a Good clerk," with the partial carbon impression of a stylized looping of the cursive "G" merely resembling an "f"?

The date is also somewhat illegible, but it seems to read "Prees Heath, 13/…/18." Prees Heath is stenciled, as is the 18. It's interesting because Prees Heath is 180 – 200 miles from Fovant—not exactly just around the corner. George's excursions from Dover to Salop to Fovant and back certainly had him riding the rails in late 1918!

Mills had been taking typewriting and shorthand classes after arriving at the Transfer Centre. My wife, Janet, assures me that he would have needed shorthand fully if he was going to be a secretary. The fact that he was only accomplished in 'shorthand theory' meant that he could read and write it, while being unable to take actual high speed dictation. My hunch is that this training would have qualified him to transcribe shorthand notes in a typewritten form, as well as serving in all other ways as a clerk typist.

On the card the word "Accept" is written in ink and initialed. Mills has also been dealt a new serial number, also penned here as: "S/440,048."

Moving on to the second document, it is entitled simply: "CERTIFICATE." [pictured, left]. It reads: "Rank Pte. No. 440048 Name Mills, G.R. Of the Reserve Supply Personnel Depot has passed this Depot Course, and has proved himself a Very Fair Shorthand Typist. Date 18/12/18." It is signed by the Shorthand – Typewriting Instructor and the captain in charge of the School of Instruction.

Mills, we find, just before Christmas of 1918, finally had skills with which to compete with the male, and probably especially female clerks, that were populating army offices on the home front in England.

His success in gaining "Very Fair" competency at those typing and shorthand skills must have been somewhat bittersweet: On 11 November 1918, the armistice had been signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, leading to the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front.

Although some fighting would continue on Germany's Eastern Front and parts of the Ottoman Empire—George's brother, Arthur, was in Palestine, you'll recall—it must have begun to look like his clerical schooling had been for naught. George, it appeared, would be going home soon.

But if you thought it would be that easy, you just haven't been following this story very closely. There would be a delay, of course. And in a rather elegant plot twist during a time marked by a deadly influenza epidemic, it would turn out to be health related—and not in a way that would make for polite dinner conversation.

Stay tuned for more. And don't worry: We'll get George home eventually…

Sidebar: Women, Technology, War, and the Army Pay Corps

It may be instructive at this point to examine what sort of an operation the Army Pay Corps was during the tenure of George Mills from 11 April 1917, when he transferred into Dover (presumably voluntarily), to his permanent and compulsory transfer out on 9 September 1918.

John Black published a paper entitled War, women and accounting: Female staff in the UK Army Pay Department offices, 1914-1920 in the Accounting History Review, Volume 16, Issue 2, July 2006 , on pages 195 – 218. Its abstract describes the situation in which members of the APC found themselves at the onset of hostilities during the First World War:

"The role of the APD [Army Pay Department] offices was to manage the pay and allowances of soldiers of the British Army, using the 'Dover' system of military finance and accounting which had been introduced in 1905 along with the command structure of the Army Finance Branch. The flexible 'Dover' system coped with the unprecedented increase in bureaucracy as the strength of the army rose from 140,000 in 1914 to over 5 million by 1918."

A valuable 2008 book, Women and Their Money 1700-1950: Essays on Women and Finance, edited by Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby, and Janette Rutterford, features Black's detailed essay describing the operation of the APD and APC during the First World War, with their emphasis being on the women staffers. At one point, by some estimates, 28,000 women were employed in the department and corps.

One interesting part of the history of army payrolls is that apparently the system previously had been retrenched and reformed, leaving the APD and the APC in a state of temporary abandonment from 1904 to 1910. Black writes: "The onset of total war [in 1914] resulted in the urgent need for industrial as well as military expansion and mobilization… [and] for enormous administrative and clerical support, as the immediate bureaucratic expansion of the financial system of the Army caused a near-meltdown of the existing system."

The need for assistance resulted in women being recruited as unofficial volunteers to help at the Army Pay Office at Woolwich between August and the end of October 1914. The War Office, however, didn't approve and ordered their removal.

Ironically, just one week later, in November 1914, women were officially recruited for work in the War Office Finance Branch, working on "matters involving separation allowances and the disposal of the effects of soldiers who were battle casualties."

Black continues: "From January 1915 the War Office began to officially recruit clerks on a temporary basis for employment in all APD establishments, including the army pay offices… From 1915 onwards, there were increasing numbers of women clerks employed within APD establishments in the UK measured against the decline of male clerks from 1915 to 1920."

What we see here is that the Army Pay Corps, overwhelmed at the opening of hostilities and in need of clerical help, likely took advantage of as many BIII classified soldiers as possible. George Mills was probably a somewhat hot commodity, even in 1917, coming over from the Rifle Brigade where he'd served as an unpaid Lance Corporal. Even if Mills had left that brigade due to any sort of deficiency, physical or otherwise, we can see that an extra pair of hands would have been considered a boon to the suddenly burgeoning and understaffed APC.

Black also explains: "The loose-leaf ledger system was introduced into the army pay offices during 1915, some moths after the official recruitment of women clerks… [It] possibly accelerated the numbers of women clerks needed to operate the 'mechanical' function successfully. The number of women clerks recruited by July 1915 numbered only 479… Six months later in January 1916 the number had risen to 4,556 and by July 1916 had risen to 9,304."

The author also points out that expansion of the army's pay services spiraled because the "notion that the war begun in 1914 would be a short one, over by Christmas, had evaporated in November 1914," and the services suddenly needed to rethink what was necessary to meet such increased and prolonged demand. New technologies were introduced to pay offices that wouldn't find their way into other sections of the military until after the war.

Not only had loose-leaf mechanics replaced leather-bound ledgers, but stencil duplicators were also in common use, as well as "Qwerty" keyboard typewriters. Evidence of the use of all of these modernisms can easily be found in the WWI records of George Mills. The author also asserts that there is ample evidence the "Burroughs adding machines and other labour-saving devices were also being used at this time."

Black goes on to suggest that there was a "shallow learning curve" associated with the daily APC routine, and that "women and girls whose previous employment may have been as machine operatives and other unskilled factory work took on the role as compiler clerks within the army pay offices very quickly."

The payroll office in Nottingham in 1916 did research that "tends to demonstrate that the transfer of mechanical skills from blue collar to white blouse was quick and effective both in training and performance."

Not everyone was in agreement, however. A contemporary document, the Griffiths Committee Report, related the fact that up to 70% of clerical work in offices was being done by female labour, "much of it an inferior and inexperienced type… The majority of the remainder being men unfit for combatant service and many of them hardly fit for strenuous office work."

While this report certainly knocks the women working for the APC, it is certainly not the least bit flattering to the men in those offices, either. George Mills was likely not alone in being seen as a relatively useless cog in a increasingly complex paperwork-generating machine that was desperately in need of skilled assistance. In 1916, for example, the Army Pay Office dealt with "660,000 accounts, while 25,000 postal communications postal communication are received each day," many of which required follow up investigations. That overwhelming workload would have steadily increased as the war dragged on into 1917 and 1918.

One must keep in mind that Black has pointed out that the APD and APC were at the vanguard ushering in office technologies that most would have found uncommon at the time, especially in the UK. He offers the following quote: "In the United States [at the time] office mechanisation was driven in large part by an ideology of systematic management; this ideology did not make it to Britain until after World War 1."

Finding enough capable workers to operate in fast-paced, increasingly modern offices full of the latest technology—yes, even the clacking typewriter was still 'modern technology' at that time—must have been a yeoman task. A man like George Mills, schooled at Harrow and sequestered in the The Grove, a house "strong in Art and Drama, and increasingly in Music, with a longer reputation for sporting prowess," was unlikely by education or by breeding—George was great-grandson of the Aclands of Killerton, grandson of rich and powerful Arthur Mills, MP, and son of well-to-do cleric and biblical scholar, the Rev. Barton R. V. Mills—to have had even the most remote clerical skills to allow him to keep pace with his distinctly plebeian office mates.

The patience shown by harried superiors is unlikely to have been much, and his situation must constantly have been tenuous at best. I will offer this olive branch of understanding to Mills regarding reverse-sexism that must have bitten him often at the time: Officers watching civilian women of that "inferior and inexperienced type" outperforming him, with his 30-inch chest and upper-crust upbringing, on a daily basis for an entire year must have, indeed, made him seem, by comparison, like one of the biggest failures in khaki.

And there were certainly enough women around to outshine him continually. In March 1917, a month before George Mills transferred into the APC, its overall military manpower was 7,693. That was augmented by 959 male civil clerks and a whopping 11,920 female civil clerks.

In August 1918, just before Mills was unceremoniously shown the door, the totals stood at 11,761 APC military staff, 997 male civil clerks, and a stunning 17,532 female civil clerks in the employ of the Pay Corps.

Between August 1918 and December 1918, the staff of the APC ballooned from that 11,761 figure above to 18,184—an influx of 6,423 actual soldiers in just four months—to reach its high water mark of wartime military staff.

However, at least one soldier was being transferred in the opposite direction, and involuntarily at that: Pte. G. R. Mills, APC 12892.

In a branch of the military so obviously starved for labour, it must have been quite an indictment of Rifleman George Mills to have been described, as we've seen, as a "fatigue man" who wouldn't "ever make corporal" and was simply "not much use."

To have been summarily and permanently sent on his merry way must have been a crushing blow to young and sensitive George, whose Uncle Dudley Mills was a highly respected captain in the Royal Engineers, and whose elder half-brother, Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills, was a recent war hero who had been wounded in France and awarded the 1914 Star, the British War Medal, and the Inter-Allied Victory Medal [left].

This is not to imply that George's family would have been ashamed of him in any way. Still, he would have to have been utterly oblivious or the owner of a certifiably bullet-proof self-esteem not to have felt injured to some degree by the way circumstances had played out for him.

George Mills—Army Form W5010 in hand and on his way to the O.C. Transfer Centre in September of 1918—would need to reinvent himself, both as a soldier in what was left of the Great War and as a potential member of the workforce when peace finally arrived.

How much of the responsibility he must have borne himself, perhaps out of laziness or even an initial feeling of disrespected privilege, is open to conjecture. It seems clear, though, that the slight, polite, and possibly even timid (at least by comparison with other recruits) Mills was quite unprepared in a great many ways for his military duties.

Next time we'll examine in more depth some of the medical reasons Mills had been classified physically as a BIII, including some issues that certainly couldn't have helped matters at all.

1916 – 1919: Army Forms B 120, 121, and 122

We are taking a break from our examination of the retirement years of George Mills, much of which was spent with his sisters, Agnes and Violet, at Grey Friars in Budleigh Salterton, as well as on croquet lawns all around south and central England.

Today, we'll stay with our look into the military files of George during the First World War, from 1916 – 1919. Last time, we found that the youthful Mills was having difficulty making any sort of lasting mark in the service, having been compulsorily transferred out of the Army Pay Corps while serving as a 'fatigue man.'

Before we examine what happened to George Mills after his departure from the APC, it may be fair to take a look at some other records in his file. It is distinctly possible that Mills may have been dismissed from the Pay Corps due to misconduct, and that he may have drunk, brawled, or even 'thieved' his way out the proverbial door.

One glance at his conduct record, seen above on Army Forms B. 120., B. 121., and B. 122. [above, left; click to enlarge] are all quite obviously free from any taint. In fact, after having been filled out upon his beginning to serve the Colours, the only amendments occur when he was transferred and subsequently assigned new serial numbers.

These documents clearly show that Mills engaged in no detrimental conduct—there is not even an entry in the blank requiring the date of his "last drunk"—and he received no punishments.

These pristine and extremely wide, open spaces also provide evidence of something else: During his entire tenure during the Great War, Mills never received what Army Form B. 121. refers to in whole as: "Good conduct badges, service pay, or proficiency pay."

Mills certainly has no black marks on his record. In fact, Mills apparently made no mark in any way, positive or negative. No bad conduct. No conduct. Not a single thing.

His transfer out of the Army Pay Corps must simply have been based on competency—or lack thereof—and we do know that officers during his tenure in the APC at Buckland, Dover [right], did not see much potential in a certain Pte. G. R. Mills.

Would things be different when he reached the Army Service Corps?

We'll soon know! Stay tuned…