War Diaries Talk

Recapitulation

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I'm afraid I don't understand the meaning of recapitulation in this context. This is the end of report listing all officers, OR, and horses (see top of page for a partial list of horses) that were with the 3rd (King's Own) Hussars Regiment through the entire war from August 1914 to 11 November 1918. The report is part of the appendices for December, 1918.

    Can anyone shed some light on this? I tried to find it on Google, but I have a feeling I'm not asking Google the correct question.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I can see by looking back at the previous two pages what this must mean I think. The previous two pages as you say are the lists of officers, men and horses who served continuously with the Regiment from when it landed in France until the Armistice. The individual listings give the names of the officers and men and the details of the horses. The recapitulation bit is simply the summary of those officers, men and horses giving just the numbers (if you look at the horses figures you can see the Squadron ones tally with the numbers in the section above).

    Fascinating statistic to look and and interesting to see that the only officers who served throughout were the more senior ones - presumably Troop Commanders were killed in sufficient numbers that none survived the whole war...

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Heather, Thank you. Your explanation makes complete sense. After all, a recapitulation is a summary. I guess I was thrown by its use as a heading, or something. I kept thinking it had something to do with the men and horses themselves, like re-enlisting, and that I just didn't have the background to understand what seemed to be an odd term. I didn't make the connection that it referred to the numbers! Sometimes I think my brain is just going all to mush.

    I don't know why there were so few officers listed there. I've worked my way through a couple of this unit's diaries, but I missed some of the occasions when the cavalry was most active: at the beginning of the war and during the German 1918 Spring Offensives. Otherwise, being a cavalry unit, they spent a lot of time out of action. They did furnish dismounted companies, but those generally seemed to go into the line in defensive positions rather than situations where subalterns would be leading attacks. I know some moved on to posts at the brigade level and a few were wounded and never returned, but I was also rather surprised to see such a short list.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    The number of officers is those who went all the way through the war with the unit. I'm not really surprised it's so short. At the start of the war the officers would all have been regulars. If they survived the initial months then most likely the junior officers would have been promoted fairly fast and moved on as they had more experience than the temporary wartime officers coming in. This Regiment does seem to be particularly good at making lists and suchlike at the end of the month though!

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    These month-end lists only showed up in say the last two months of the war. Before that the diary just moved from one month right into the next one. I do think they weren't particularly strict about recording all the officers who joined or left. New names turn up on the lists that have never been mentioned in the diary text.

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