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Curious about my father’s WW1 war years

Q I am very keen to learn more about my father’s WW1 war years. I have a photo of him that I hope may hold clues.

Jean Sutherland

A Roderick Fraser Sutherland is wearing the cap badge of the Royal Regiment of Artillery and his attire tells us that he is associated with horses, noted by his spurs and ammunition bandolier. The photograph can be dated to the end, or just after the war, because he has two inverted long-service chevrons and a wound stripe on the lower part of his left arm. The woman in the picture looks older than Roderick and might possibly be his mother. A search in the WW1 medal rolls of all three branches of the artillery returned only one man with the name Roderick Fraser, who was Gunner number 217773 in the Royal Field Artillery. Roderick was awarded the British War and Victory campaign medals in May 1920, but because he was not entitled to the 1914/15 Star, this means that he did not go overseas until sometime after January 1916. Alas, Roderick’s service dossier is one of over four million lost in an air raid over London in 1940, but a fellow artilleryman with a close RFA number 217756, whose record has survived, enlisted in Inverness. This number was issued in March 1916, a significant date, see below.

Roderick’s birth registration records him only as ‘Roderick Sutherland’, born 7 August 1893 at 67 Castle Street Inverness to parents Roderick and Johanna Sutherland, née Fraser, his father a railway engineer. In the 1911 Census Roderick is still at school aged 17 and living at home with his parents and siblings at 4 High Street, Inverness. Post-war Roderick moved with his parents to London to work on the railways and married Clara Jane Dooling in Pancras registration district, Q2 1933 (aka ‘Jane Clara’ and nicknamed ‘Jenny’, born 16 October 1901), adding his mother’s maiden name to his name string on the documentation. In the 1939 Register, Roderick now a boot and shoe repairer, is living with Clara at Greenland Road, St Pancras, London.

Without Roderick’s service record it’s difficult to reconstruct exactly what he did during the Great War, but some conjecture can be made. Roderick’s two long-service chevrons denote at least five years’ service, placing him in uniform pre-war, most likely as a part-time Territorial Force (TF) artilleryman. This is reinforced because Inverness was home to a