Searching World War 1 Records
With armistice day being yesterday, someone asked me: 'how do I search for relatives who served at war'? - So I thought I would write an article on this to help anyone new to the world of WW1 records.
Firstly, the easiest record to use for finding out information about WW1 relatives is service records. These can be found online at many of the big family companies, like Ancestry and Find My Past. However, two thirds of these records were destroyed in World War 2. They can contain a lot of information such as parents, wives and children, which is helpful when trying to locate your relative. They normally have a few pages of information such as height, eye colour and when attested as well as their service history. This is the first page of Arthur Edward Shire's service record.
Firstly, the easiest record to use for finding out information about WW1 relatives is service records. These can be found online at many of the big family companies, like Ancestry and Find My Past. However, two thirds of these records were destroyed in World War 2. They can contain a lot of information such as parents, wives and children, which is helpful when trying to locate your relative. They normally have a few pages of information such as height, eye colour and when attested as well as their service history. This is the first page of Arthur Edward Shire's service record.
If you can't find any service records for your man; you could try the Medal Roll Index Cards, which are free to view at Ancestry at the present. The information generally found on these cards is: (as shown below) name [sometimes just an initial for forename], regiment(s), rank(s), service number(s), and medals received. They do sometimes contain the address, battalion, whether killed in action, date of entry (into war), theatre of war and date of demobilisation of the soldier. They will also probably show if the soldier got a Silver War Badge. A diagram of a more simple one is shown below:
From the index card you can find your relative on the 'Medal Rolls', for World War 1. These can only be searched on Ancestry - if your not able to get to the National Archives in Kew. These do sometimes contain extra information such as battalion, dates of entry & demobilisation and how/why they were demobilised among with a variety of other information. These are usually done collectively with about 10 people per page. An example of Arthur's (in yellow) is shown below.
With all the information you can get from these you can then try and get the battalions war diary to see if your relative is mentioned or you can use them to find out what they got up to. If you still can't find out your relatives war diary you could look for people in the regiment with a similar service number and find out what battalion they were in. *Note - this won't always work*. For Arthur this would put him in the 12th Battalion.
Alternatively, you could find out what division the battalion was in and find out what battles they took part in. This is best searched from The Long, Long Trail website. To do this you search for the regiment in the search box on the right hand-side of the page. Then you scroll down to the battalion your relative was in (I will use the 12th for this example) and see what division they were in. For Arthur, it says:
12th (Labour) Battalion
Formed in Plymouth in April 1916 and moved to France as Army Troops to Fourth Army.
April 1917 : became 156th and 157th Companies of the Labour Corps.
This would suggest that between April 1916 to April 1917 he was in the Fourth Army before he joined the Labour Corps. This matches what was on his 'Medal Roll Index Card' so is probably his battalion. If we then search for the 'Fourth Army' we can see that he took part in the Battles of the Somme and the Pursuit of the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line. The Labour Corps was slightly different to the the pioneer battalions and they did labouring tasks instead of front line action.
Arthur survived World War 1 and returned back to his family in Corfe, Somerset.
Published: 12 November 2015
Alternatively, you could find out what division the battalion was in and find out what battles they took part in. This is best searched from The Long, Long Trail website. To do this you search for the regiment in the search box on the right hand-side of the page. Then you scroll down to the battalion your relative was in (I will use the 12th for this example) and see what division they were in. For Arthur, it says:
12th (Labour) Battalion
Formed in Plymouth in April 1916 and moved to France as Army Troops to Fourth Army.
April 1917 : became 156th and 157th Companies of the Labour Corps.
This would suggest that between April 1916 to April 1917 he was in the Fourth Army before he joined the Labour Corps. This matches what was on his 'Medal Roll Index Card' so is probably his battalion. If we then search for the 'Fourth Army' we can see that he took part in the Battles of the Somme and the Pursuit of the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line. The Labour Corps was slightly different to the the pioneer battalions and they did labouring tasks instead of front line action.
Arthur survived World War 1 and returned back to his family in Corfe, Somerset.
Published: 12 November 2015
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*Note - No copyright infringement was intended. If there is a breach in copyright contact me through the 'Contact' section so it can be removed. All photos are Copyright © 2015 Harry Clarke. All Rights Reserved. The image for the homepage of this article is courtesy of Alan Ranger. The images of records in this article are courtesy of Ancestry and the diagram of the index card was created by Harry Clarke with the function of helping people understand the card, the index card itself is again courtesy of Ancestry.