Tuesday 29 March 2011

Using army numbers to trace service histories

Thanks to the efforts of the Luftwaffe during WW2, finding service records for WW1 soldiers can often be a frustrating task. However, if you know a man's number, all is not lost and there is still a lot that can be gleaned from it. For this post, I've taken a random number, 2345, and run a search on The National Archives site to see how many results are returned for "Essex". Here are the results:

3/2345 Pte J Winch
2345 Frank Martin, Essex Yeomanry
2345 John J Cook
2345 Arthur W Cranmer, 7th Essex
2345 Honace [sic] Thomas Reardon
2345 Henry W Williams

So, six results; one for the Essex Yeomanry and five for the Essex Regiment.

3/2345 Pte Winch served with the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion and his number tells me that he must have joined the battalion in the second week of August 1914.

2345 Frank Martin's number for the Essex Yeomanry dates to between June and October 1915.

2345 John J Cook's battalion is unclear.

2345 Arthur Cranmer served with the 7th Essex (that much is clear from the information stated on his card) and his number dates to early August 1914.

2345 Horace Reardon also has the number 275371 which indicates that he served with the 6th Battalion and joined up in September 1914

2345 Henry Williams' battalion is also unclear.

So by a process of elimination, John Cook and Henry Williams must have served with either the 1st or 2nd Battalions or the 4th or 5th Battalions. They cannot have served with service battalions as these numbers didn't start until around 12000.

If they had served with the regular battalions, they would have had to have enlisted around February 1888 and so we can pretty much rule this out as they would have been in their mid forties by the time Britain went to war. It's possible, but unlikely.

So we're left with the likelihood that the two men were also territorials, one serving with the 4th Battalion, the other with the 5th. A quick search on Soldiers Died in The Great War reveals that 2345 Henry Walter Williams was killed in action in August 1915 whilst serving with the 4th Essex Regiment. His number dates to September or October 1914. This leaves just John Cook, and the likelihood that he served with the 5th Essex Regiment, his number dating to around the 5th September 1914.

Just to round things off, I checked the numbers on Ancestry and found that Horace Reardon's service record survives in WO 363 and shows that he joined the 6th Essex on the 18th September 1914. No records for any of these men survive in WO 364; at least not that I have found.

The army number information, and tying in those numbers to actual or estimated dates of joining comes from my extensive database of army regimental numbers and I have a separate blog dedicated to this fascinating study.

Thursday 17 March 2011

Ancestry - WO 364

Ive just noticed, somewhat belatedly perhaps that you can now search by regiment on Ancestry's digitised WO 364 series. It was always a big frustration for me that you couldn't do that when the series was first published. Well done Ancestry. Now if only you could search across both WO 363 and WO 364 at the same time on name, regiment and number...

Thursday 10 March 2011

Operation Big Ben - WW2


Another offer from the Naval & Military Press, probably the world's premier military-book retailer. The blurb reads:

OPERATION BIG BEN
The Anti-V2 Spitfire Missions 1944-45

Published price £14.99 this weekend only £2.95

Best known for being the first presenter of Tomorrow's World Raymond Baxter had a active RAF career as a Spitfire Pilot.

Flying with No. 602 Squadron RAF in September 1944. On 18 March 1945, he took part in a daring daylight raid on the Shell-Mex building in The Hague, which was the HQ for V1 and V2 attacks. The commander, Max Sutherland, received a bar to his DFC and the other four pilots, including Baxter, were mentioned in dispatches.

In an interview he described flying over a V-2 rocket site during a launch, and his wingman firing on the missile: "I dread to think what would have happened if he'd hit the thing!"

This highly significant book draws attention to one of the best kept secrets of the Second World War. Through Squadron histories, log books, official reports and interviews with the people who flew clipped winged Spitfires to dive-bomb V2 rocket sites towards the end of World War 2, a story as fascinating as the Dam Busters Raid or the Battle of Britain is at last fully told. The authors explain the difficulties of the missions, utilising the firsthand recollections of the men who completed the dive-bombing raids. They show the extreme dangers and complexities of dive-bombing as well as how to dive-bomb, all of which is supported by lists of the Spitfires that flew with the squadrons and V1 and V2 target statistics. This book is an essential reading for all those interested in the Second World War.

Craig Cabell and Graham A. Thomas Forward by Raymond Baxter
SB 206 pp Illustrated

To find this very special "this weekend only offer" look in our “SPECIAL OFFERS” SECTION ON OUR WEB SITE.

Published price £14.99 this weekend only £2.95