I’ve unexpectedly found an ancestor that died in 1917, in northern France. As part of his WW1 Army Service Record, there is a section labelled as his ‘Military History Sheet’ - and under the part for ‘Wounded’ it says ‘pw neck’ and then this word followed by some numbers...and I can’t make out the word at all. Later on in the record it details his injuries/cause of death as gun shot wounds over most of his body including his neck, but I can’t see any other references to this word.
It was one of those discoveries where I just came away from the computer feeling so sad, and the poor lad has been on my mind since. Can anyone decipher it? I’ve done lots of genealogy and even some paleography training but I just can’t work it out.
@ButterflyWitch I wondered that but there seems too many letters between the d and the f? Plus as he died of his wounds I wouldn’t have thought they’d have recorded that? But it could be! It’s a tricky one for sure.
@Iseethesilverlining I will try do that - there’s only really that line (you can see it in the left pic) written in the same hand, but I’ll give it a go.
@ButterflyWitch that was my guess too - any Googling of ‘pw’ for military records just brings up PoW which I know he wasn’t, so I think it must have been puncture wound.
Not sure what the numbers are following the mystery word. Looks like P17319 but that isn’t recorded anywhere else as a number associated with him. That’s a really interesting idea about direction of a bullet. It’s very sad reading further on - he was wounded on 2 Feb 1917 (gsw to feet, head, legs neck, and hands) and transferred to a field ambulance, then to a casualty clearing centre where he died on the 3 Feb, with the cause of death recorded as gsw to neck and legs
