(2017-08-28, 08:55 AM)Chris Wrote: I'm certainly not an expert in WWI records, but I know the soldiers' documents are incomplete because many were destroyed by fire.
But I would think the records of deaths would be more complete. I just tried a search for Saunders with initial E who died in 1917 on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, and that turns up the Eric Stanley Saunders who died 19 June 1917 and is buried at Poperinghe (in Belgium).
The only other one I couldn't rule out as an Eric with the help of ancestry.co.uk was an E. Saunders who was a private in the Royal Canadian Regiment, who died 1 May 1917 and is buried at Wimereux (in France). But now I see he was an Ernest:
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembranc...tail/84840
Also both the E. Sanders in 1917 can be ruled out as Erics with the help of ancestry.co.uk.
So the only possibility there of an Eric (first or middle name) who died in 1917 is Eric Stanley, which isn't an exact match for the information in the book, because it's two months too early and in Belgium rather than France.
I just realised I had stupidly taken "gone out" to mean "died" rather than "gone to France". So he could have died after 1917. But another search of the CWGC database still shows no possible Eric.
I came across a copy of Findlay's "An Investigation into Psychic Phenomena" (1924), which relates the Eric Saunders incident (starting on p. 13). Presumably he reused the text in his later book:
http://www.iapsop.com/ssoc/1924__findlay...nomena.pdf
As Obiwan pointed out, Findlay said he didn't know which regiment the man came from, as the men came from all over the country.
It seems there's something wrong with that story, but it's difficult to know what.