Featured WW1 Coin Dogtag

Good evening
Here is something from my collection, from the Battle of Amien that took place on 8-11 August 1918. I believe some things are worth remembering...
I bought this 1908 British halfpenny in Cape Town years back. Reason I got it is because it had numbers and dates stamped onto it. I was first told that it is almost impossible to get any meaning from "random numbers" on coins as it is not easy to put it into any context.
After some research I found that they are not that random at all. These are regiment numbers of two Canadian brothers from WW1. 105 was the 105th Overseas Battalion. 712234 belonged to the younger brother Robert Walter Warren ( born 13/03/1897) and the other to his older brother, Wellington Pope Warren (born 22/03/1896). They were from Prince Edward Island and inlisted in 1915 and 1916.
Wellington died on the 8 of August 1918, the first day of the Battle of Amiens. He is buried in the Toronto cemetery in Demuin, France.
The younger brother also died in combat on the 24th and was laid to rest in the Hillside Cemetery near Somme, France.
It still a mystery why their numbers ended up on this coin and how it found its way into a coin scratch patch in Cape Town.
Groete
Jannie

 

Amazing. The amount of information you were able to find just knocks my socks off.
The story of these brothers is heartbreaking. I mourn for the lives they never lead... the families they never raised.

 

That's sad. My guess would be a friend or family member had it done to remember the brothers. Coinage was available but metals may have been restricted due to war rationing.

 

I wouldn't expect that much wear on that date by then.

No hole as a dog tag would have.

I think likely done later.

 

It's not wear - it's the flattening from being counter punched.
Around the edges are still pretty detailed.

 

Files I got for Wellington

 

Roberts file
Here one can see the battalion number 105.
So we even sort of know how the 2 bothers looked like when they went to war.

 

could it have been placed at the gravesite?

 

Ahhhh, the things we plan to get around to.......and never do !

 

That explains how it got into the house, but not how it got to the UK. On the lady's wrist presumably. I'd say likely she carried it into the UK herself and maybe she and the watch both stayed there.