Interesting photo this one, because whilst the crew number B18 would definitely be linked to 2nd Battalion, the name, which appears to be "Malyoma" would seem to indicate 13th Battalion. The tank number 9345 is often the best clue if you can link it to some records, but in this case all we know about 9345 is that it was issued to 9th Battalion at Weywertz on 20 June 1919.

My suspicion is that this tank was issued to 13th Battalion, was damaged and repaired and then re-issued to 2nd Battalion, who returned it to Central Workshops where it was refurbished for issue to 9th Battalion to guard against any civil unrest in German speaking Belgium. Trouble is, whilst this fits the information it's all supposition. Anyone able to offer any more information - or suggest what "Malyoma" might mean? Even the mighty Wikipedia doesn't seem to recognise the word!?

Gwyn

I thought it was Malvoma with a v, which turns out to be a brand of tomatoes sold by a Malvern (Worcs) grower. No idea if they were tinned tomatoes (!), but a Google Books entry (just postwar, alas) gives a/the manager's or owner's name as Colville Stewart. It might be possible to relate this name (or other owner names) to the relevant officer, but if it has moved unit this may not be practical.

Otherwise Malyoma is today a Burkina Faso town. No idea if it was called/spelt that then ...

Mike

On the topic of portmanteau words, Malvoma would certainly qualify as it is MALVern tOMAtoes I assume.

I have found a little more on the net which confirms that the company was definitely active during WW1 and it is indeed mentioned in a history of the wartime food campaign in the area by a chap called Hillyard. However, this is not to be had online (though it might be worth a look in a local library to see if it has anything about the wartime production). The firm seems to have been at Pickersleigh.

However this is all still rather a long shot as I found no likely looking Colville Stewarts on ancestry.co.uk other than the known chap. I still wonder if the tomatoes were indeed tinned - and part of the rations, like Maconochies or Fray Bentos? Or if it was someone who had worked there?

*** Sudden additional thought. I wonder if the tank was officered by someone from Malvern and given the nature of the town it is a good chance that that was someone from Malvern College, i.e. the "public" [actually quite the opposite, but that's the English for you] school in Great Malvern. Such a chap would have been through the College's Officer Training Corps - compulsory for all fit boys - and would automatically become an Old Malvernian when he left (like, incidentally, Nigel Duncan of 79th Armoured who once told me about his schooldays there). But I can't see how the relevant abbreviation OTC can be incorporated into that. However, one could take MALVern and OM and add an A for euphony. Just a thought. Though it could also be a double pun on the (still hypothetical) tinned tomatoes from that source, or simply the trade name even if not tinned and not QM stores, which I daresay would appeal to the schoolboy sense of humour of those still terribly young chaps (the Chapel anteroom is heartbreakingly full of memorial plaques to that generation).

A quick check on Oxford Dictionary of National Biography brought up Arthur Somers-Cocks = Baron Somers, but he was i/c the 6th Battalion (or at least that is the only TC unit which the ODNB mentions in his entry), so no good to us, and by the way also reminded me that J. F. C. Fuller was also a former pupil (and also a certain A. Crowley and C. S. Lewis to liven up the cricket hearties). But as it doesn't mention Nigel Duncan I suppose there are plenty of others missing! The school will have a Roll of Honour (but one hopes our chap survived) and it certainly has or had an archivist when I last inquired (about radar during the later war: for much of that war it was the base for the TRE, now RSRE, now Qinetiq).

Any clearer photos to confirm the spelling?

-- Edited by Lothianman on Sunday 2nd of September 2012 08:07:14 PM

-- Edited by Lothianman on Sunday 2nd of September 2012 08:09:40 PM

There was certainly a tank called "Malvern". I know that's no help whatever but thought I'd throw it in anyway. Unfortunately this is the only photo of this tank I've seen.

Gwyn Evans wrote:

---

There was certainly a tank called "Malvern". I know that's no help whatever but thought I'd throw it in anyway. Unfortunately this is the only photo of this tank I've seen.

---

 Interesting. I almost wonder if there were two Old Malvernians (or 1 + 1 local chap) - and one hogged the Malvern name first so the other had to find something different ...

Thank you for the previous answers to my questions. I understood that the tabs on the straps are devices to facilitate the passage of terrain.

This machine does not have the record of use in combat operations - Could this machine participate the operations or was just a backup machine?

 

In the records of landships are machines 9344, 9347 from 9th to 13th batalion, which are made by the numbers in the same time and apparently hit in the fighting.

 

And to the name of tank. On landships sites is for MARK V the name of the tank called MALVOM. Could it be later renamed? In this photo is obviously the name MALYOMA.

 

Thanks for your answers.

 

FLIGHTER20

-- Edited by flighter20 on Monday 3rd of September 2012 02:27:08 PM

Flighter20, yes the "tabs" are wooden blocks attached to the tracks (what you refer to as "straps") and are intended to help the tank cross bad ground.

This tank's service history is not clear. Certainly it served in Battalions that did some fighting in the second half of 1918 so this tank may well have seen action.

I'm not sure how 9344 or 9347 are relevant, but both were Mark V Females. 9344 served with both 9th and 10th Battalions, and later served with the White Russians before being used by the Red Army. By this time it had been converted to a Composite. 9344 survives in Lugansk. 9347 is known to have served with 9th and then 4th Battalions. Neither machine to my knowledge served with 13th Battalion.

Gwyn

Apology accepted - and unnecessary.

Unfortunately, I do not know the name of any of the tanks.

Errors when painting on the tank certainly occur. I recall being told by another researcher he'd found a WW2 British tank with one serial number on one side of the hull and a different one on the other.

I believe the tank "Malvern" in Dublin to be a Mark V* Male, partial serial 1012?  The photo shows it at Bovington.

Gwyn

Tomato update:

Wasn't sure that canned tomatoes were available in WWI, but it seems they existed from late 19th century. A Doughboy is quoted as saying, "Most of the time we had canned salmon and canned tomatoes with coffee." Acc to Benedict Crowell in America's Munitions, the AEF was supplied with "canned tomatoes, nearly 190,000,000 tins." That's a figure that's hard to ignore.

Never heard them mentioned in connection with British troops, but I suspect they were a bit exotic for us. Even in my childhood, tomatoes were eaten sliced, with salad, on summer Sunday evenings only, or grilled with bacon and egg. Tinned tomatoes were regarded with considerable suspicion, being of an unfamiliar and untrustworthy shape, and foreign. I think most Britons took the plunge when they made their first Spag Bol sometime in the 1970s. Certainly, when I persuaded my parents to buy me a tin of Heinz spaghetti, they stood watching me eat it to see what would happen.

Anyway, the point of this is: maybe Malvoma did make canned tomatoes, or maybe the crew had seen the US variety and substituted a well-known British supplier. If that's the case, then the name is a little joke about being in a can, on the same lines as Fray Bentos.

I offer in support a photo of WWI era tinned tomatoes.

 

-- Edited by James H on Friday 2nd of August 2013 03:39:23 PM

Good stuff!

The house at 210 Pickersleigh Road is too modern on a look on Google View to be contemporary with the Great War, being a 1920s-1950s semi at first glance, and a check of the Ordnance map published in 1927 does not show it in existence, whereas it is in the 1930s version of the map. So there must be a later connection. A check of the between the wars map suggests that it was within 100-200m of the Tomatoland greenhouses site so maybe that is the reason for the name, nothing direct to do with the tank!

I wondered again if the owner of the tomato business, apparently called the Malvern Horticultural Company, had anything to do with the tank, perhaps a son in the Tank Corps? The owner was one David COLVILLE-STEWART but it turns out that he changed his name legally to this in 1921 (www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/32288/pages/2950/page.pdf). He was presumably legally called David Colville STEWART (but in practice with or without a single barrel surname according to mood!) before then. He does seem to have been the owner at the right time. In the years immediately after the Great War he lived at 8 Lansdowne Crescent, Malvern, and moreover, there is a 1912 report of him as owning the tomato business before the war (www.malverngazette.co.uk/news/memories/9699606.Boost_to_horticulture/).

The full combination of the three names is unusual but also vulnerable to misreading/misspelling when keying into the computer. The only one I can find in the 1911 census is an 'author' , boarding in Chalfont St Peter, Bucks (rather fascinatingly the other lodgers included a married "suffragist"). He is seemingly the one born in Forfar in 1882 to (apparently) an Alexander Stewart, merchant.

Whether this is the tomato chap on holiday I am not sure. At any rate, if they are one and the same, and if he was correctly put down in the 1911 census as single, he surely had no legitimate children of an age to be tankies in 1916-19 - and would have been pushing it to have illegitimate ones.

I also cannot help thinking that in the socially stratified atmosphere of the time, it would have taken a brave subaltern to name his tank after the family business, though a NCO commander of the tank might have been more relaxed.

Still, it is possible that some relative of the same name was in fact the Malvoma grower, given the way in which Scots families recycled given names. At any rate, the name Stewart, perhaps accompanied by Colville, may be worth checking out if it turns up if and when anyone ever finds out who the Malvoma crew were - which I leave to those who know their service records.

Found a better photo of the tin.

We were not blessed with a boarding school in Salford in the 1960s. However, we had a well-subscribed and thriving Young Offenders' Institution a short distance away, and from what I have heard of boarding schools the casual observer might not have immediately noticed the difference. I should have mentioned that the Heinz spaghetti was served, as we would say nowadays, on a bed of toast. Apricots usually followed the (tinned salmon) salad, topped with "evap". Chop and chips was one of my favourites. When a green pepper (then known as a capsicum) appeared in the greengrocer's window, a crowd formed. I'm not joking.

Anyway, if anyone can turn up the names of Malvoma's crew, that could well tie it up.