Search 9 billion records on Findmypast

Online family history website, Findmypast, has just launched a handy little widget which enable you to quickly search its impressive database of 9 billion records. Included amongst these, I see, are nearly 31 million indexed military records; indexed mind you, there will be plenty of other records that have not been indexed, not to mention British newspapers as well.

If you haven't already used Findmypast, now could be the time to do so. Just enter the basic details in the box on the right. I searched for my grandfather, Walter Leonard Nixon, who was born in 1893 and I got 530 results! Better still, my grandfather appeared in six results on the first page of results.

Go on, give it a try. Searching is FREE!

Book review: The Journey's End Battalion

Michael Lucas has written a cracking book here which must have taken months if not years of painstaking research. For me, to use a hackneyed phrase, this book ticks all of the boxes:

• it is well researched
• it is well-written and hence, readable
• there are extensive notes
• there is a good bibliography
• there are appendices
• there are maps and photographs

All of the above may be blindingly obvious essential requirements for a military historical work of fact and yet it is surprising how many books fall down on one or more of these check-box points. A good researcher may not necessarily make a good author; a good author might be a sloppy researcher, and so on.

The 9th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment was a New Army battalion and also home to R C Sherriff who would later write Journey's End. The play's title, and a nervous-looking R C Sherriff, appear on the dust-wrapper of this volume.

Unless you're a die-hard 9th East Surrey's historian, you may not want to read the book from cover to cover; apart from anything else, the relentless casualties soon make for depressing reading. Nevertheless, this is a terrific tool for the First World War researcher and it earns a place on my bookshelf because of this. The book is published to the usual high standard we've come to expect from Pen & Sword.

Ox & Bucks Light Infantry

Anyone with an interest in the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry could do worse than at least check out this website: http://www.lightbobs.com/. The site is a bit clunky and in need of a re-design, but there's some good information here.

A word of advice: make sure that after you've clicked on a link on the right-hand menu, you scroll down the page past the menu bar. The design of the site leads you to believe that there is no content (see below), but as I say, you need to scroll down to the end of the menu.

The site is regularly updated and its scope is large, covering the regiment in all its many guises: Buckinghamshire Rifle Volunteers, Oxfordshire Light Infantry, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. There is a lot of useful detail on the regiment during the First and Second World War and the site owner, Steve Berridge, is to be congratulated for his labour of love. Well worth checking out.

The gratuitous cenotaph photograph was taken by me last week on a beautifully bright and sunny morning in Whitehall.

I also offer a comprehensive, fast and cost-effective military history research service. Follow the link for more information. 

The essential Silver War Badge guide

A so-called "leading authority on military and family history" has dismissed the First World War silver war badge rolls in a newly published guide as "not very informative."  Of course, his assertion is complete and utter tripe. Here are nine reasons why the silver war badge rolls are an essential resource.

1. For a start, because so many service and pension records from the First World War do not survive, the rolls can provide vital information that is not recorded elsewhere. This fact alone makes the SWB rolls a vital resource.
2. The silver war badge rolls give the date a man enlisted.
3. The silver war badge rolls give the date a man was discharged.
4. The silver war badge rolls give the cause of discharge. Sometimes this might be simply expressed as the relevant regulation from King's Regulations but it usually states whether the cause is due to wounds or sickness. Occasionally, even more detail is given, such as the nature of the wounds or sickness (see below).

 

5. The silver war badge rolls state whether or not a man has served overseas.

6. Because the badge number is stated in every case, it is possible to check whether the badge you have in your collection really does belong with the medals you acquired at the same time. Similarly, a solitary silver war badge can, because of its unique number, open up a number of research paths for you.

7. Many silver war badge rolls also give the man's age (see below)

 

 

8. The silver war badge rolls will usually give the man's battalion or unit; information that often does not appear on medal index cards

9. Full names may be expressed on silver war badge rolls yet only appear as initials and last name on medal index cards.

 

So beware "leading authority" opinion and ignore the silver war badge roll at your peril. It's always been a fantastic resource and is arguably the most informative of all the First World War medal/badge rolls.

 

The photo on this post, which was, once upon a time, in my collection, shows a veteran wearing his silver war badge. Image extracts are from different SWB rolls and are Crown Copyright, The National Archives.



Edwin Mole - The King's Hussar

When, some thirty-four years ago, I started building my library of First World War literature, I did so by using the bibliography in Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory as my starting point. It was a wise strategy and I still have most of those books that I acquired from various booksellers in the UK.

These days, despite the advent of the internet, I still favour the bibliographic approach and recently acquired The King's Hussar by Edwin Mole who served with the 14th (King's) Hussars and latterly the Suffolk Yeomanry between 1865 and 1888. I came across Edwin Mole thanks to the Marquess of Anglesey who quotes him extensively in volume three of his A History of the British Cavalry. I haven't finished reading Mole's account yet but it starts off promisingly enough and includes an account of Mole and some school chums attempting to re-enact actions from the recently ended Crimean War.

According to the author, a pupil at the Latymer School, Hammersmith, it was his idea to re-enact the blowing up of the Redan at the newly constructed Church of St John the Evangelist. Not for Mole and his chums simple play-acting, rather each of them saving their pocket money to buy gun-powder and ultimately an explosion that fortunately did not cause long-lasting damage to life and limb (or St John's church).

Edwin Mole's papers survive in the army pension series WO 97 (accessible on Findmypast) but the richness of his military career is contained within the pages of The King's Hussar. After attempting to blow up the local church, the army was probably the best place for him to go.

Site improvements at Ancestry

I've just noticed that Ancestry have been busy improving the layout of some record collections.

I've only looked at military records so far, but those that I have seen are laid out far more clearly than they were previously and, in the case of SDGW, it is clearly stated that what you are looking at is a transcription only (see screenshot above). There is also room to leave your own comments which I don't think was an option in the previous version.

I have just added a post about George Flack, seen in the example above, who was killed in action 100 years ago today. It must have been a rotten Christmas for his family.

 

The screenshot above is the entry page into my great uncle's service record on WO 363. Here, you can quite clearly see that there are images in the collection and in this case I did leave a simple comment which is now visible in the top right hand corner.

 

 

All of this is very neat functionality, and there is also the option to connect with people who may be researching the same man. In this particular case, we're back to Ancestry's usual "serve 'em up everything" approach and I see that there are supposedly 48,862 results, the first result being a man who was born in 1832.  So this can't possibly be my great uncle and one would have thought that more fine-tuning to serve up relevant results (or at least, more relevant results) shouldn't be so hard to achieve.  Perhaps it's in the pipeline. 

 

Find your own military ancestors on Ancestry by clicking the link.

 

Was your ancestor captured in 1914?

I've just added my latest roll of 1914 other rank prisoners of war on my army service numbers blog, this time for the Irish Guards. 

I have noticed that in most cases where it is indicated on a medal index card that a man was a prisoner of war, that capture took place in 1914.  This holds true for the majority of regiments although of course there are exceptions and it doesn't necessarily follow either that all 1914 PoWs have this information stated on their cards. John Roache, above, is a case in point, although note that this card does not include details of his 1914 Star either.

Army Lists

This is probably a case of preaching to the converted, but Army Lists can be incredibly useful in tracing an army officer's career, and they're also easily available these days. There are a number of vendors selling bundles of volumes on eBay (from around £7) and you can also download digital images from The Internet Archive. I downloaded the Army List for 1909 just the other day. I had a copy of this on my desk at work and it took about five inches of desk space (and was also quite unwieldy to use). Now, it's a 155mb file on my desktop and easily searchable within a few seconds.

XI Hussars memorial, Canterbury Cathedral

Here's another memorial to cavalry in Canterbury Cathedral, this one erected by officers of the XI (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars, in remembrance of three of their brother officers killed in action.

50th Foot - Canterbury Cathedral memorial

This stunning memorial is situated inside Canterbury Cathedral. I popped in there yesterday and was staggered by the number of military memorials there, many of these (unsurprisingly) to cavalry units. This one is special because you effectively have a complete roll of honour for men of the 50th Foot who lost their lives in the Sutlej campaign of 1845 and 1846.  Note the Roman numeral L and the regimental name half obscured by Victory's banner. She looks worn out; testament to a tough campaign and hostile territory.

North Irish Horse

I stumbled across this great website devoted to the North Irish Horse when I was looking for an image of the Le Touret memorial to use on my post commemorating the death of Charles Frederick Henry Brown of the 4th Middlesex Regiment.  From my brief look at the pages on the site it seems to be extremely well-researched and, I would suggest, is an essential bookmark for anybody with an interest in this regiment.

The image above appears on the site, courtesy of the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (catalogue number D1482/6) and shows members of the Sergeants' Mess at Murlough in 1912. My congratulations to site owner Phillip Tardif for compiling such a useful resource.

Victorian Wars Forum

Forums can be incredibly helpful when it comes to researching aspects of the British Army, and one of the best, in my opinion, is the Victorian Wars Forum which covers British military campaigns between 1837 and 1902.

Earlier this week I posted a query regarding a photo of a mystery unit, a football team (above), photographed somewhere overseas. The suggestions I received were immediate, reasoned and helpful. I'd posted the query on behalf of someone I'd met at a conference in Devon last Saturday and I know that the lady concerned is enormously grateful for the responses. You can read those responses by viewing the topic HERE.

I'd suggest that if you have an interest in the British Army during Queen Victoria's reign that the Victorian Wars Forum is the place to be.

Hommes 40, Chevaux 8

The ubiquitous trucks which transported many British troops closer to the front line. This image taken from issue two of The Great War, I was There.

The Angels of Mons

There were veterans that I met in the 1980s who still believed in the legend of the Angels of Mons, and who would get quite emotional, despite the fact that the whole story was simply that, a story, and not even a story about angels for that matter. 

I was looking through some old issues of The Great War, I Was There earlier today. I bought my set from a little second-hand bookshop just around the corner from the Imperial War Museum in 1981 and I still think it's a very useful resource. I particularly like the comments in the Old Comrades Corner section which I indexed many years ago and may publish one day.

Issue two of TGWIWT contains an article by the author behind the story and I reproduce that here. But first, here are the key passages from Arthur Machen's original article which detail the moment that the bowmen appeared to the BEF as they poured bullets into the massed ranks of advancing German infantrymen. The complete collection by Machen can be downloaded free of charge from The Internet Archive.

 

 

 

And here's the article about the origins of the story (which I may need to scan at a higher resolution). For now, click on the image then right click, save, and view through your normal application.

 

 

 

The First World War online - Naval & Military Press

The Naval and Military Press has long blazed the trail for naval and military books and offers arguably the most comprehensive selection of military books anywhere. I've been a customer - and a fan - for many years and whilst I would always prefer to buy an original regimental history or an original half-forgotten military memoir, the fact of the matter is that these books have become increasingly scarce and hard to come by. They were scarce when I first started seriously buying military books in the early 1980s. Now, many are virtually impossible to find, even if you do have bottomless pockets.

In addition to their impressive book catalogue, the company has also just launched a new website - Naval & Military Archive - which offers two extremely useful collections.

The first is a searchable database of the medal rolls for the 1914 Star, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Inter-Allied Victory Medal and Territorial Force Medal. The company has transcribed the information from the original medal rolls and the database - like N&MP's other databases such as Soldiers Died in The Great War - is effective and simple to use.  In many cases, the information you find on the rolls may be no more than you'd find on the medal index card - and in some cases in fact, less. On the other hand, some of the rolls state former service, giving battalion or unit details which may not have been included on the medal index card. In any event, no serious Great War researcher would NOT want to at least run a search on these medal rolls.

The other resource which is going to be a godsend for many, is the war diaries. As the website states,

"These War Diaries are the official accounts kept by most units of the British Army on active service during the Great War. Fully indexed, dates and locations of the unit are given along with intelligence reports, maps, precise plans for battles etc. These diaries are the most detailed, accurate and authentic accounts of what actually occurred on a daily basis during the war to the soldiers in the trenches."

So what could be better than to identify your ancestor's battalion from the medal rolls and then go straight to the war diaries to find out what he and his comrades were up to. And if your ancestor was an officer, you stand a greater chance of finding him mentioned by name, especially if he was a casualty.

I highly recommend this new resource which will become even better as more and more diaries are added. A site to bookmark.

Prisoners of the First World War - International Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross has published a free online archive of prisoners of war of the First World War. The release is long-awaited and contains the details of thousands of men  captured between 1914 and 1918. Click on the image above to go straight to the ICRC website and start searching.

The First World War online - findmypast.co.uk

As one of the people responsible for licensing data collections at Findmypast, I must declare an interest in what follows. Earlier today I posted on Ancestry's First World War offering and now I'm going to turn my attention to Findmypast.

I was an Ancestry subscriber many years before I was a Findmypast subscriber. Ancestry had everything I needed, namely the pension records and service records for British Army other ranks. I was researching soldiers from Chailey in Sussex and the irony was that I completed my research when I was living in India, having embarked on the project several years earlier when there was virtually nothing online and trips to the National Archives in Kew were essential. How times have changed.

Over the years, Findmypast has caught up with Ancestry and at the time of writing has also now published the First World War service and pension records. I believe the Findmypast version to be superior. The records are more thoroughly indexed than those on Ancestry meaning that the researcher stands more chance of finding his or her Great War ancestor. Unfortunately, I didn't find any more of my family members but I did find quite a few Chailey men who Ancestry had completely failed to capture. WO 363 and WO 364 are difficult series to index but Findmypast did spend longer going through these records, looking at over 35 million images in the collection not once, but twice. The indexing is not perfect, no indexing is, but I believe it is far superior to the Ancestry version. The records are more thoroughly indexed and there are hundreds of thousands of additional names - snippets mostly - which have never previously been captured.

Findmypast does not have medal index cards but it does have a transcription of the silver war badge roll and it also has great collections for the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Royal Navy officers' service records and Royal Navy ratings' records for the Royal Navy, as well as Royal Air Force officers can all be searched on Findmypast and all have been licensed from The National Archives. In addition, Findmypast has also recently digitised, transcribed and published Airmen's records from the First World War, allowing it to claim the most complete collection of British service records online.

Add to this impressive tally the enrolment books for The Royal Tank Corps and Royal Artillery and various documents from The Honourable Artillery Company and you have some very useful supplementary information, for although the RTC and RA records ostensibly deal with the inter war periods there are a lot of men listed here who have outline sketches of their former service during the First World War recorded.

Findmypast has also recently published a number of partial rolls for various pals battalions and the Welsh Guards and - take it from me - there is a lot more to come.

In common with Ancestry, Findmypast has also published much of the available Naval & Military Press catalogue and it has some extremely useful and unique record collections from before the First World War (which I'll cover elsewhere).

Clicking on any of the Findmypast links on this post will take you straight to their website where you can find out more for yourself.

Tip. When searching on Findmypast, use the A-Z search and also read my First World War service record search tips HERE and HERE.

Terms of Enlistment

From The Army Book for the British Empire (published 1893)

"The mass of men, ie those for the Line (cavalry and infantry), and the Royal Artillery, enter for seven years with the colours and five in the reserve or eight years with the colours and four in the reserve, if the period of army service expires while the man is abroad. The Foot Guards and the Royal Engineers have the option of the above, or of three years army and nine years reserve service and an additional year of army service if abroad. All recruits for the army Service Corps enter for three years army, and nine reserve, service."

My italics, and explains why you do occasionally see Foot Guards attestations for seven and five, or indeed twelve years (long service).

I've borrowed the excellent photo of Grenadier Guardsmen in 1914 from Christina Broom's People & Places blog.

Facially disfigured servicemen from WW1

findmypast has published an expanded index of facially injured servicemen from WW1.  Due to the graphic nature of the majority of the images, just the indexes have been published, although parent company brightsolid paid to have the complete archive scanned and digitised and has provided digital copies to the Royal College of Surgeons which now holds the material.

The remarkable archive charts the work of Dr Harold Gillies and his pioneering teams who painstakingly reconstructed the faces of injured servicemen with remarkable results.  The photos on this page show the injury sustained by Lieutenant William Spreckley who - according to the index on findmypast - sustained a gunshot wound to his nose on the 14th January 1917.  In actual fact, his nose was completely blown off, as can be seen.  All the more remarkable then, that he should have achieved the appearance he had in later life  - see below:

William Spreckley, born in Derbyshire, died in 1974 at the age of 80.  His service record survives at The National Archives in London.

Harold Gillies's seminal work, Plastic Surgery of the Face, can be downloaded free of charge from The Internet Archive.  Click on the link.

WW2 Royal Artillery honours and awards online

If your Royal Artillery ancestor was in receipt of an award for service during the Second World War, you'll probably find him or her on a brand new dataset just released on Find My Past. Royal Artillery Honours and Awards 1939-1946 contains details of awards to over 21,000 men and may include the following information:

• soldier's title, first name (sometimes only initials, last name, rank and number)
• soldier's post nominals at the time of the award
• date it appears in the London Gazette
• unit the man was serving in at the time of the award, when known
• award itself
• branch of the regiment
• theatre of operations in which the soldier was serving at the time
• schedule number
• file number
• who the award was recommended by
• theatre of operations
• remarks on the award
• further service notes, when known
• status
• date of event
• cause of death (as applicable)
• place of residence
• date of discharge
• reason for discharge

These records have been assiduously compiled by the librarian at the Royal Artillery museum in Woolwich and are searchable on findmypast from today.