WALTER ERNEST BRUNT

I accidentally stumbled across this interesting item which provides a nice little footnote to my previous piece on The Boer War. What you see above is a page from the military record of Walter Ernest Brunt. We have not encountered the Brunts yet but they are ancestors of my cousins Bern and Sue on their father's side. Walter was actually Sue and Bern's grand uncle.  To be exact the above is a page from his disciplinary record.  Walter volunteered for service in the regular army at the end of The Boer War. He had prior to enlistment been a member of  the 3rd Btn Royal West Surrey Militia and on joining the regulars he was posted to The Queen's West Surrey Regiment.  Walter was a Carman by profession and 18 years old when he joined up.  He was Five foot five and a half inches tall, weighed 115 lbs with a fresh complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. His first year of service was spent in England but on 3 January 1903 he was posted to South Africa and did not return to England until 8 June 1904.  What makes Walter's army record so interesting is that he seems to have been quite a bad boy!  The offences started in 1902 with him going absent for the relatively short period of ninety minutes and there follows a string of entries for "late for parade" "being absent" "improperly dressed on parade" etc.  The first offence on the sheet shown above is for "insolence to an NCO"  but the second one is seemingly of a more serious nature as he was apprehended attempting to leave camp while unlawfully in possession of another soldier's kit with intent to sell it.  Despite this Walter continued to serve in the Army until 1915.

Bern Dell wrote :  I just read about monsieur Brunt on the blog. Now I know where my dad got it from. That write-up could easily have been about my dad in Egypt. Especially the bit about finding stuff that wasn't lost and then selling it!