Almost impossible to discover which Douglas your Grandfather rode. At the outbreak, some people volunteered complete with their civvy requisitioned bike. However, as a DR or other user of a motorcycle in the Army, you would be issued a bike for a day, week or month or until it needed repair or overhaul when you would be issued another one. Then of course at the end of hostilities he would wave farewell to the bike. Meanwhile, during the war, bikes were overhauled or rebuilt with unit replacements - frequently new frames - so keeping track of a particular bike would again be impossible. My 1913 Model O has no frame number which implies it had a replacement frame which may indicate wartime use. Its original buff log book doesn't even mention engine or frame numbers, just a registration number. So again, no chance of tracing a particular bike's history. One of my father's poignant memories was of having to leave his 16H Norton on the quayside at Bombay as he sailed home after the war. They just wouldn't let him bring it with him. I wonder what became of it.
