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Seeking stories of consumer citizen warriors who have crossed swords with commercial and governmental behemoths. |
WHERE’S GEORGE WASHINGTON WHEN YOU NEED HIM? THE BRITISH ARMY I think it would be fair to refer to my childhood as strange or unusual. Actually, those a very mild term to describe some of the things that happened to me while I was trying to grow up, but there’s no need to recount them here. The specific details aren’t relevant to the subject matter of this book, except for one. In 1944 I was living in England and in December of that year, two months shy of my sixteenth birthday, I joined the British Army, originally as a "boy soldier," signing up for a 12 year hitch. Again, I won’t go into the details of why and how this came about, but I will tell you that it was a terrible mistake that I worked hard to rectify, and after three years and seventy seven days , I was successful. I got out! Then, 44 years later, I began to think about that experience and almost on a whim, wrote the following letter; Rt. Honorable Archibald Hamilton, M.P., Minister of State for the Armed Forces Main Building, Whitehall London S.W.1. A 2HB England May 19, 1992 Sir: From December 11, 1944 to February 25, 1948, I served in the Regular British Army, receiving an honorable discharge under Para 390 (XV1) KR’s 40, ceasing to fulfill army physical requirements. I would appreciate knowing if there were any post service benefits of any kind to which I may have been and may still be entitled. Cordially, Jeff Smith I didn’t hold out too much hope for any kind of positive reply. Still, I think my heart quickened a little a few weeks later as I opened a letter from MINISTRY OF DEFENCE, Empress State Building, London SW6 11R. Dear Mr. Smith: Thank you for your letter of 19 May, which has been forwarded to this office for reply. Under the Regulations in force at the time you were medically discharged from HM Forces a soldier was required to complete at least 12 years reckonable service for pension purposes from age 18 to qualify for an invaliding pension. Unfortunately, you have insufficient service to satisfy this requirement and consequently you have no entitlement to such an award from Defence funds. However, the Department of Social Security (DSS) administer a War Pensions Scheme for ex-service personnel who suffer from a disability which is either attributable to, or aggravated by military service. If you would like to make a claim for an award, I would advise you to contact the following address: DSS War Pensions North Fylde Central Office Norcross Blackpool FY5 3TA I enclose a guide to war pensions and allowances which I hope you find of assistance. Although you have no entitlement to a pension from Defence funds you should have received a War Gratuity in respect to your war-time service. The normal method of payment for War Gratuities was into a Post Office Saving Bank account opened specifically for the purpose. If you would like to follow the matter up you should contact the National Savings Bank, with details of your service ie Rank, Regt number, etc at the following address:- The National Savings Bank Boydstone Road Cowglen Glasgow G58 1SB I hope this information is of assistance. Yours Sincerely, M.T. Archer A couple of explanations before I go on. First about my army discharge. The discharge papers say "ceasing to fulfill army physical requirements." The truth is that I was befriended by a military doctor who sympathized with my dread of the years of service that loomed before me, and he wrote a report recommending that I be released from my twelve year obligation based upon my mental health. It was highly appreciated at the time but three years later it almost came back to haunt me. I was moving permanently from England to the United States when my discharge papers surfaced and I had to prove to U.S. authorities that I wasn’t nuts. Somehow I managed to convince them and here I am, 50 years later. The second item that needs to be clarified here is that all of the letters from British authorities are reproduced exactly as they were written, so if you find yourself wincing at the strange grammar, punctuation and spelling, it’s all the fault of the British military. Still, the reference to a possible Savings Account in my name somewhere intrigued me. After all, 44 years had passed and even if the original deposit was minuscule, with compound interest… well who knows what fortune might await??…. So: The National Savings Bank Boydstone Road Cowglen Glasgow G58 1SB Scotland June 25, 1992 Gentlemen: Enclosed is a copy of a letter from the Ministry of Defence responding to an inquiry from me regarding benefits that might have been available to me at the time of my discharge from the Regular Army on February 25, 1948. Also enclosed are Xerox copies of pages from my Certificate of Service. At the time of my discharge, I was not aware of any War Gratuity to which I may have been entitled and certainly I was not informed of any Post Office Savings Bank account opened in my name. If the Ministry of Defence is correct , such an account should exist in my name, with details as follows: Name: Jeff Smith Service #: xxxxxxxx Rank: Pte. Service Dates: December 11, 1944 to February 25, 1948. Corps: R.A.O.C. I would appreciate learning of the status of such an account if you are able to find it, and if not, please tell me how to go about availing myself of this benefit to which I have apparently been entitled for the last 44 years! Cordially, Jeff Smith And back came a response from NATIONAL SAVINGS in far off Glasgow, Scotland. 4 August 1992 Dear Mr. Smith Thank you for your recent letter regarding War Gratuities. The circumstances of payment was that those who left the Army between 8 May 1945 and 31 December 1947 normally had monies due to them in respect of War Gratuities or Post Office War Credits paid in a Post Office Savings Bank Account paid specifically for this purpose. Those who continued to serve after 31 December 1947 would have had all such sums due paid through their Army pay accounts. I hope you find this information useful. Yours Sincerely J Oswald Again a reminder that these letters are reproduced exactly as originally written. I am not responsible for the fact that there is no punctuation in this letter other than four periods - one at the end of each paragraph!! And note that both M T Archer and J Oswald are "yours sincerely." Was a pattern beginning to emerge at such an early stage of a behemoth battle??? I decided to tackle them both at the same time, thinking that maybe the best strategy would be an attack on all fronts. After all, my opponent was the army and the initial skirmishes sure looked like the opening shots in a war. So… J. Oswald National Savings Bank Glasgow G58 1SB Scotland Your ref: 43RMI/553/92 August 12, 1992 Dear Mr. Oswald: I hope the salutation is correct. "J" is not particularly indicative of gender. I thank you for your letter of August 4, 1992, though I find the information you supplied more frustrating than useful, as my letter to the Ministry of Defence (copy enclosed) indicates. I think I may well have been "on the cusp" with respect to my date of service termination and may never have received any war gratuity. On the other hand, the amount may have been so small, I may have received it as part of my army pay without realizing it. The army pay records should tell the story. Meanwhile, while your letter implies that no National Savings account exists in my name, you did not say that one was not found. Was it looked for? Would an account that has been inactive for 44 years still exist? What is the National Savings policy regarding inactive accounts? Perhaps you could answer these questions while I pursue the uncovering of this mystery with the defence department. Cordially, Jeff Smith CC: M.T. Archer And on the same date…. M.T. Archer Room 838 Ministry of Defence Empress State Building London SW6 1TR 8 August 12, 1992 Dear Mr. Archer: Enclosed is a copy of a letter received from the National Savings Bank in response to my inquiry about a war gratuity you described to me in your letter of June 12, 1992, and my response to National Savings. Also enclosed is a copy of my discharge certificate which may have some relevance in this matter, National Savings did not say that I do not have an account in my name - only that war gratuities were paid through army pay accounts for people who served after December 31, 1947. My official end of service was February 25, 1948, but I was actually released from service long before this date - very likely in calendar year 1947. Even my discharge certificate was signed on January 2, 1948. Frankly, I do not recall receiving any "war gratuities" in the way of regular army pay. Indeed, I may not have received any monies from the army in 1948. My final payments may well have been in 1947. I think the only way to resolve this is to request a copy of my pay records for the appropriate period, say for the month of December, 1947 and any pay records that may exist for any subsequent period of time. I would also like to know what the formula was for calculating such gratuities - that is, what would my gratuity have been for my rank and service dates? For your information, the details of my service were as follows: Rank - Private; Service Number xxxxxxxx; Corps - R.A.O.C ; Service Dates - December 11, 1944 to February 25, 1948. I look forward to hearing from you. Cordially, Jeff Smith CC: J. Oswald National Savings Bank It took two months for the National Savings Bank to send me the expected disappointing four line response, again without any punctuation other than paragraph ending periods!! 12th October 1992 Dear Mr. Smith Thank you for your letter of 12 August 1992. Despite further extensive searches no account in your name can be found. I am sorry I am unable to help you. Yours Sincerely J Oswald On the other hand, the Ministry of Defence responded in six days… 18 August 1992 Dear Mr. Smith, Thank you for your recent letter concerning your war gratuity. Unfortunately at this late stage we are unable to validate your claim. In accordance with normal practice your pay documents were destroyed 7 years after the end of your service. There is, therefore, no way of checking what pay or gratuity you were entitled to and what you actually received. I can assure you, however, that before they were destroyed your records would have been carefully checked for any outstanding credits or debits. I am sorry to send such a disappointing reply. Yours Sincerely, J. A. Kimsey (Miss) At least Miss Kinsey used a few commas, though all in the wrong places. Actually, the signature was an unreadable scrawl, but at the top of the letter was typed "from Miss J A Kinsey, Adjutant General Secretariat 2." And while I have great respect for the gentle sex, the letter from this lady made me mad and I replied accordingly: Miss J.A. Kinsey Adjutant General Secretariat 2 Ministry of Defence Empress State Building London SW6 1TR England Dear Miss Kinsey: Your letter of August 14 was indeed a disappointing reply to my pursuit of an elusive 44 or 45 year old war gratuity. I am very disturbed at the assertion that you are unable to validate my claim because the records no longer exist - and bemused by your assurance would have been "very carefully checked for any outstanding credits or debits" before being destroyed. Seven years after the end of 1947, when you say my pay records were destroyed, I was living in the U.S. No army authority could possibly have known where I was and thus could not have informed me of any credit due. If an outstanding credit HAD been found, or a record found of a payment to the National Savings Bank, what would have happened to it? Would another record have been made? Would that record also no longer exist? To recap, I returned to England from Hamburg on December 3, 1947, having already been granted a medical discharge. Although my records show an official "end of service" date of February 25, 1948, I was released to civilian life shortly after returning to England, and while I may have been paid for army service through February 25, 1948, I am almost certain that pay would have been issued to me before January 1, 1948, even though the date on my discharge certificate is shown as January 2, 1948. According to the National Savings Bank, any war gratuities due a serviceman who was discharged through December 31, 1947 would have been paid into a savings bank account. For discharges after that date, war gratuities would have been paid through the normal pay process - presumably as part of pay received after January 1, 1948. I certainly wasn’t handed a savings bank account book - and as I’ve stated in previous correspondence, I don’t recall receiving anything resembling a special gratuity, and I don’t recall receiving any army pay at all in 1948. Let me try to explain why I am pursuing this with such persistence and why I am writing yet another letter to the Defence Ministry despite your letter saying nothing can be done. When I inquired earlier this year about possible benefits arising from my army service, it was almost on a whim. However, I became quite angry when I learned that apart from being entitled to war gratuities which may or may not have been paid into a bank account on my behalf, I could have applied for some sort of medical pension or lump sum benefit at the time of my discharge. I was a disturbed and homeless young man when the army was through with me. I could have used some help. It did not occur to me for a moment in 1947 to ASK if there were any post service benefits to which I might have been entitled, and as I’ve already pointed out, no army official ever volunteered such information. Despite your assurance that the army would have "carefully checked for anything that may have been due me," the fact that I am only NOW learning of benefits that might have been due me 44 years ago, leads me to a somewhat different conclusion. Frankly, I conclude that not providing me with information about potential benefits at the time of my discharge was at best an act of gross negligence, and now citing the passage of time and the absence of records as a reason for not being able to do anything about one of those benefits that may never have been received by me, compounds the negligence. I have now applied to the Department of Social Security for a possible medical pension or lump sum payment based on my army acquired or aggravated medical condition, though I don’t hold out much hope for a positive response. If pay records are gone, I doubt that medical records would still exist. How convenient for the Ministry of Defence. How inconvenient for me. But I don’t plan to give up just yet. We have advocacy groups in the United States that work on behalf of ex-servicemen. May I ask if such groups exist in the U.K. or if there are any avenues of appeal open to me that you are aware of regarding the possible non-payment of war gratuities due? For example, can an appeal be made to someone up the ladder at the Ministry of Defence - or perhaps to an M.P? I look forward to receiving a reply to this question. In the meantime, I will continue to pursue this matter in any other way that I can. Cordially, Jeff Smith Maybe my plea wasn’t very subtle, but still I thought it might strike a sympathetic cord somewhere and maybe someone at that oddly spelled ministry would take pity on me and authorize some kind of token payment, and I would have been happy. It was more a matter of principle than money. I just wanted someone to say - you know, you’re right. Maybe we goofed and you should have been fully informed and maybe we owe you a buck or two and how about we send you X dollars and we’ll call it even. In your dreams Smith J (army spelling). This wasn’t just Behemoth. This was the British military. The British GOVERNMENT for heaven’s sakes. Can you get more bureaucratic than that? 12 October, 1992 Dear Mr. Smith: Thank you for your letter of 28 August in reply to Miss Kinney’s letter of 18 August. Firstly I should explain that your service records still exist. The records that have been destroyed are your pay records, which contained the information which we would require to validate your claim. I am sure that you will appreciate that without this documentary evidence there is nothing that we can do to prove your claim that you did not receive your War Gratuity. You claim that you were unaware of any post-service benefits that you may have been entitled to in 1947. All these benefits were given wide publicity at the time. It might reasonably be expected, therefore, that you would have seen some of the information regarding your entitlement. For this reason, I cannot accept your statement that the Army somehow acted in a "grossly negligent" manner in not informing you of your rights. The information was available to you. You might consider contacting the Royal British Legion for advice, but I should say that you are now in possession of all the facts concerning our inability to process your claim, and an approach through the RBL will only result in the same answer, that we no longer have the information to deal with your claim. I hope this letter clarifies the position for you. Your Sincerely. J C Kite By the time I finished reading this last letter, I had reached a few conclusions about the Ministry of "Defence." Everyone there except Miss Kinsey was gender neutral. These people were trained to sign their names with initials only, leaving the poor recipients to guess whether the writer was male, female or something in between. There also seemed to be a single person at the Ministry whose job it was to type all outgoing letters and who had almost no familiarity with the English language and absolutely no knowledge of the rules of punctuation. Depending on what the weather was on a particular day, or perhaps what the typist had for breakfast, outgoing letters would contain more or less numbers of commas, periods, quotation marks and other items of punctuation, but whatever the number they would always be randomly scattered throughout the narrative. And I also became fully aware that I wasn’t going to win any argument with this particular behemoth. But still, I couldn’t let that last letter go unanswered, could I??? October 20, 1992 Dear J.C. Kite: I cannot say that I am surprised at the content of your letter of October 12. It certainly clarifies the obvious. You are the bureaucracy. You deny that my claim has any validity. You make it very clear that there is no appeal. Case closed. Nonetheless, I am compelled to make further comment in response to the illogic of your conclusions. I assert very strongly that I did not receive any such thing as a wart gratuity but I am willing to abide by whatever documentary evidence exists. (See my letter to M.T. Archer dated August 12, 1992). You say that you cannot validate this claim without documentary evidence and you’ve destroyed the only evidence that ever existed and so there is nothing you can do. My goodness J.C. Kite. What if other branches of government conducted themselves in this way? I might not even be able to prove my birth! Sorry Mr. Smith. All those records were destroyed in 1935. Therefore we cannot validate your assertion that you are alive. You go on to say that the army wasn’t grossly negligent because there was publicity about war gratuities and notices in post offices. PUBLICITY??? Is that how people were supposed to know about service benefits due them in 1947 and 1948? Following that line of logic, I could give money to a beggar in the street and then be arrested for aiding and abetting a criminal because his picture is on a "wanted" poster in the post office, or the story of his crimes had been reported in the papers. When and how is the official notification of such benefits conveyed to one about to leave the service? In what chapter and verse in published army literature is the method of notification described? Where are copies of the document or documents that were used to advice servicemen and ex-servicemen of these benefits? I have a brother who is five years my senior who still lives in England and who served in world war two in Europe and the far east. He was discharged after the war - certainly WAY before the end of 1947. He received NO war gratuities that he can recall. He has never HEARD of war gratuities. And he’s in touch. He’s been going up to London for an ex-servicemen’s parade for 46 years. As a matter of curiosity, I will explore this wide publicity that you say existed in 1947. I presume it was also well publicized in Germany, which is where I was stationed at the time. Perhaps I will ask one of England’s inquiring newspapers about such publicity and also what they think of this whole affair. Obviously I won’t contact the Royal British Legion. You’ve already told me what answer you would give to them. I may never be able to get any war gratuities from my former country, but perhaps I can stir up some interest in shining the light of publicity on the way the Ministry of Defence handles the records of those who served their country and how it conveyed information to them, about benefits to which they may have been entitled. Cordially, Jeff Smith I really wasn’t expecting a reply, but it came anyway, confirming other conclusions that I had reached by this point in the exchange of correspondence. The people at the Ministry of Defence had no sense of humor and they were heartless bastards to boot! 30 October 1992 Dear Mr. Smith: Thank you for your further letter concerning your claim that you did not receive a war gratuity payment for your service during World War 2. War Gratuity payments were authorized by a Royal Warrant which was published under the reference Army Order 2/1946 (30/General A/156). This Warrant would have been available to all members of the Army. As has been explained to you on previous occasions your discharge date meant you did not have to apply for your gratuity. It would have been paid to you automatically along with your Army pay at the time of your discharge. With regards to your comments concerning the handling of your pay documents, I should explain that Army pay records are dealt with in exactly the same way as all other forms of financial records. There is no legal requirement for records of this type to be held for more than seven years, as after the expiry of this period all claims become null and void. This is not only true for the Armed Services, but is equally true of all financial transactions. I have to tell you that there is nothing further that I can usefully say on the subject. Yours Sincerely, So polite, these English. Even while telling me to get lost, they kept on insisting that they were my "sincerely." It was obvious that J.C. Kite and his ilk had nothing to do with actual military operations or World War 11 could have had a totally different outcome. On the other hand, he would probably be considered an inspirational genius by today’s Enrons and Arthur Andersons. To all intents and purposes, the Kite person’s last letter brought this particular losing Behemoth Battle to an end. Still.. I was curious about one thing…. December 22, 1982 Dear J.C: Actually, despite the closing line of your October 30, 1992 letter, there is something that you may be able to "usefully say" with regard to my lost war gratuity payment. Obviously my last army pay was for several weeks of service, and if there was an amount included that was a war gratuity, it may not have been large enough to be noticed. I would certainly have noticed and remembered anything substantial. Therefore, as I continued to work on this mystery, it would be useful for me to know what the amount of the gratuity would have been, given my time of service and my rank, all of which information you have in previous correspondence. Please excuse the informal salutation. J.C. really doesn’t convey much about gender. Cordially, I figured as long as J.C. Kite and his colleagues wanted to be "sincere" in signing their letters, I could remain "cordial." But I never heard back from the Kite person, despite a follow up letter in April, 1993. I did carry on correspondence though, moving from agency to agency until I finally quit in May, 1994. There were a lot more letters, but I’m adding only one that sums up the sadly comical conclusion of this sorry affair. It is from the ARMY PENSIONS OFFICE Room 4198 Kentigern House 65 Brown Street Glasgow G2 8EX 14 April 1994 Dear Mr. Smith: Thank you for your letter dated 24 February relating to a claim for a war gratuity. Your original correspondence was forwarded to me from DSS to try and answer your claim for a gratuity although I have little to add which will be of any help to you. Firstly I must point out that this office is not resourced to carry out searches into records of service to try to establish whether or not a payment is to be made. Our function is to assess pensions and gratuities on the basis of paperwork forwarded from the Manning and Records offices. I did however do some research on your case and managed to obtain your service details from our repository at Hayes. There is very little additional information in your file other than you were discharged under Para 390(xvi) of the King’s Regulations 1940. On reading the relevant Para in relation to your case, you would have been eligible for the sum of œ1 (to be paid into your pay account) on the day you were discharged from hospital. The article also stated that the payment of œ1 would only be made once any debits on the pay account had been cleared. Your total service was 3 years 77 days of which only 364 days were reckonable toward pension (as you were under 18). At that time anyone medically discharged could claim pension if they had 5 years reckonable service. Unfortunately you would not have qualified. I have been unable to find any regulation which states you are due a gratuity for your length of service although again anyone with 5 years reckonable service could qualify. I apologize for the disappointing reply and can only confirm that I can be of no further assistance to you. Yours Sincerely, Mrs. H Dimmer For Officer in Charge So after all this time, here was someone, not only revealing her sex but telling me how much I WOULD have received for my war gratuity - a grand total of one pound sterling, provided of course that I didn’t owe the army that much or more. I’m not sure how much faith could be put in the accuracy of Mrs. Dimmer’s information because I was never able to find out if paragraph 390 of Kings Regulations actually had anything to do with war gratuities. It might have been some other kind of bonus payment, because she also said that there was no way I could ever get any kind of army pension, and some time later I was granted a token UK army disability pension which I receive to this very day. But even if she was confused about which regulation applied to war gratuities, the one pound mentioned by her probably wasn’t far off the mark because my pay scale at the time of my discharge could be counted in pennies!!! So assuming the amount was correct and assuming it was deposited in a post office account somewhere and left untouched for 44 years, here’s what would have happened. The pound in 1948 had a fixed dollar exchange rate of $4.30. Assuming an average of 7% interest compounded for 44 years, my lost fortune, had I been able to collect it, would have been $84!!!! But it was still worth the battle. If you don’t throw down the gauntlet to Behemoths, they win by default and if we let that happen we might as well follow the advice on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack which you can find posted on many a wall around the world. And that of course is to PUT YOUR HEAD BETWEEN YOUR LEGS AND KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE. HOME |
