When researching an ancestor that was in the Military
there are a few things that will help get you started in finding them:
·
Name & Regiment
·
Medals (if applicable)
·
Date & Area of service (e.g WW1 in France
or WW2 in the Somme)
If you don’t know most of these don’t worry. Finding out
about your Ancestors has become easier than ever, even if you have a name &
nothing else to go with but finding out as much as you can beforehand doesn’t
hurt either. Your best starting point to finding out any of these is asking
members of your family, which if nothing else should give you a good place to
start searching. It is important to help you find Military Records if you can
find out whether your Ancestor/s were in the Army, Navy or Air Force (RAF for
example). But as far as I’m aware there wasn’t a separate Air Force until March
1918.
Some of the things you may find out online about your
Ancestors are:
-
Their physical appearance (e.g. through
discharge or pension records or photographs).
-
Medal Awards.
-
Appearing in the Newspaper (e.g. a local
paper or in the London Gazette after earning a Medal).
-
Photographs.
And some of the thing you might come across at home or
after visiting relatives or even visiting memorials:
-
Medals
-
Cap Badges
-
Photographs
-
Postcards and/or Letters home
-
Stories from Family Members
-
Their name on War Memorial or Gravestone
It can often vary on what you will discover about your
Ancestors time in the Military as not everything has survived or readily
available to the public and sometimes your Ancestor may not have,
understandably, wanted to talk about his/her experience during the either of
the World Wars. But I’ll explain more on this later on.
An almost Constant stream of paper evidence starts from
about 1750 and one of the best, if not the best, places to visit is The
National Archives, they hold discharge records & medical records that may
very well tell you when/where your Ancestor enlisted and which ship or regiment
they enlisted on and/or when they were discharged.
War Diaries exist, mainly from WW1 & WW2, if you’re
lucky your Ancestor might be mentioned. But usually Soldiers aren’t mentioned
by name and it’s Officers that are mentioned, if anyone is on the Unit/time you
are looking at.
If you’re unable to visit The National Archives (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/)
then their website could hold clues to help you as they have a Downloads page
called DocumentsOnline (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/)
which includes, but isn’t limited to WW1 & WW2 Campaign Medals, War
Diaries, Victoria Cross Registers, WW1 Airwomen's Records & records for the
Royal Hospital Chelsea.
If any of your Ancestors died during either of the World
Wars then you may find details on them through the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission (http://www.cwgc.org/), since
1914. It hold details over 1.5 million Servicemen & Service women who died
during the World Wars and about 60,000 civilian people who died during bombing
raids.
Ancestry.co.uk has plenty of online records for you to
search through which includes but isn’t limited to: WW1 & WW2 Campaign Medals,
Discharge Records, Pension Records, Service Records & records for the Royal
Hospital Chelsea.
It will be worth mentioning that there was a street fire when
a bombing raid struck the War Office repository in Arnside Street, London in September
1940 and due to fire & water damage, some records haven’t survived – so called
the Burnt Records or Burnt Documents but others have survived, some of which
can be viewed online, there are an estimated 2.8 million service records that
survived or reconstructed from the Ministry of Pensions.
Useful
Links
Ancestry.co.uk Military Records - http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/category.aspx?cat=39
Military Genealogy http://www.military-genealogy.com/
Forces Reunited - http://www.forcesreunited.org.uk/
Commonwealth War Graves Commission - http://www.cwgc.org/
The National Archives DocumentsOnline - http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/
The National Archives - (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
