Hi historians, we found my fiancees great grandpa's RAF kit bag under some stuff in her great aunts basement. Apparently he would never talk about his time in the military (and passed away long ago), so we've got little info to go on.
Do any of you folks happen to know what any of the writing on the bag means? (If it actually has any significance)
The sgt, and his name (c wall) we have figured out as well as that the two stripes signify it was during wartime.
654555 is his service number; I thought it started with a "G", but you can double check in the AIR 78 records at the National Archive (specifically AIR78/163), page 465 of the second PDF shows "WALL Cyril Edward", 654555. The card is stamped "F" indicating he joined before the war, which is consistent with this service number list that puts the number in the range for joining around March 1938. I'm not sure if there's any significance to "BEATTY/W82", perhaps someone who used the bag later?
Not much else to go on from the bag, but if you're interested in his service and he died more than 25 years ago (or you have permission from next of kin) you can request his records from the Ministry of Defence.
