Yes, I do know about that abomination ......... an administrative conveneience. Home Counties are contiguous with London. Sussex, thankfully, is not.
Here is part of a 5 Part, Lummis Prize-winning series by Stewart and Langley, MHS Bulletin:
The ‘“Home Counties”’ regiments use of compounds.
Compound regimental numbers were used by the War Office from time to time, never more so than during the Great War, but an earlier system was in place in the infantry before then.
What are loosely called ‘The Home Counties’ regiments (in fact the regiments of the No. 10 Grouped Regimental District) used ‘L/’ for soldiers on regular engagements, ‘S/’ or ‘SR/’ for men of the Special Reserve, and ‘TF/’ for the Territorial Force from 1907 or 1908. The compounds do not appear to be present on the two sets of campaign medal rolls for the South African War 1899 – 1902, and there is suggestive evidence that the compounds were not created until the new administrative district was formed by the addition of Middlesex to the existing Kent, Surrey and Sussex counties on 27th November 1907.
The East Surrey regimental records in Soldiers Died in the Great War and those held by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) are unusual for a regiment in this grouping in that they are published without any prefix, but individual soldier’s headstones and medals of the regiment do indeed show compounds.
No authority or firm date for the origin of the practice has been traced, and no obvious reason either, unless it was to distinguish between regulars, the Special Reserve, and the Territorial Force, but the regiments comprising No. 10 District used them before the Great War, and continued to do so after the outbreak of war. Taking events in chronological order, the addition of compounds beginning ‘G/’, ‘GS/’ and ‘GSSR/’will be dealt with in a later paragraph.
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