Object August 2009

Corporal Jack Coupland's battle with the Pensions Ministry

It took Corporal Jack Coupland MM seventeen months to persuade the Ministry of Pensions to award him a gratuity in respect of his shattered arm.

Jack Coupland’s papers concerning his wound and his claim for money, including a portrait and an X-Ray, will be on show at Woodstock throughout September 2009.

Jack Coupland enlisted in August 1914, aged 17. He was posted to France on 20th May 1915 with the 5th Battalion, The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, later transferring to the Machine Gun Corps. Over the next three years he fought in every major battle but one, which he missed due to one of his three wounds. Awarded the Military Medal in 1916 for bravery on the Somme, he returned to England in May 1918 with a very severe arm wound. He was discharged from the Army in  January 1919.

Two extraordinary letters from the Ministry of Pension in January and April 1919 said, “Your disability is found to be neither attributable to nor aggravated by your military service in the present war”. Clearly incensed, Jack wrote on the letter, “NOTE: disability admitted, but where did I meet a shrapnel ball except in the army?”

In July 1920 he eventually received £35 – equivalent to about £720 today – as a  gratuity on being discharged medically unfit. Again he wrote on the letter: “Received this pittance for a severe wound in the left arm…3 years fighting Jerry, 17 months fighting the Ministry of Pensions.”