Findmypast opens up First World War service records

Hot on the heels of Ancestry's vastly improved look, feel and functionality to its military records which I announced yesterday, comes a very useful enhancement to the search functionality of Findmypast's First World War service record search.

I refer specifically to the collection called "British Army Service Records 1914-1920" where the simple addition of a Keyword search box has just made life a whole lot easier for everybody.

To give a simple example, if you were interested in researching men of the 15th Battalion, London Regiment, finding them before today was a painful process. You could search on "London Regiment" but then you'd need to wade though all the results, ignoring all of those men who served in battalions other than the 15th.

Now though, you simply type in 15th Battalion in the keyword search box and you are presented with 6299 results. What's more, whilst in order to get the best results when searching for a regiment you need to be liberal with the use of wildcards - see my post on Findmypast's blog about this - you can forget about wildcards altogether on the keyword search.  Typing in 15th Battalion will return results for 1/15th, 2/15th, 3/15th etc.

This addition is going to be extremely useful for drilling down into service records. The sub units have been recorded in many cases but you simply couldn't get at them before today. Now you can.

I know what I'm going to be doing over the Christmas break.

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.

Online military searches

If your relative served in the British armed forces there are two websites which must absolutely be at the top of your list: Ancestry and findmypast.co.uk (FMP).

Ancestry has the best WW1 collection: WO 363 (burnt records), WO 364 (pension records) and WO 372 (campaign medal index cards).

Find My Past has the best pre-WW1 collection: a superior Boer War offering, WO 97 (Chelsea Pensioners discharge papers) and WO 96 (militia attestations - due on-line in late spring 2011).

Both Ancestry and findmypast.co.uk feature datasets from the Naval & Military Press stable - Soldiers Died in the Great War (SDGW), Ireland's Memorial Records, WW2 Army Roll of Honour etc - and both sites also have other minor data sets licensed from third parties. For some reason, FMP doesn't include the regimental number field on some of its N&MP datasets - like SDGW for instance - and this can lead to frustrations. On the upside however, FMP's version of SDGW features often features much useful additional information about the unit a man served with. See below as an example.



When it comes to the on-line search experience, Find My Past is way up front, and here's why:

1. Transcription accuracy
Findmypast.co.uk is way ahead of Ancestry when it comes to accuracy of transcription. What's more, if you do spot a mistake you can suggest a correction. Ancestry offers this facility too, BUT, you can only correct limited fields AND there appears to be no system of checking a customer's correction. This is foolhardy because customers get it wrong too. With FMP, you can correct multiple fields and your corrections are checked by a third party before they're accepted for publication. Furthermore, whilst Find My Past strives to improve on accuracy of transcriptions, Ancestry gives the impression of being content to let glaringly obvious transcription errors languish on its database when a simple find-and-replace action by a half-knowledgeable software developer could cure all of that at a stroke.

2. Speed
findmypast.co.uk service records download roughly four times faster than the Ancestry records. So if you're a heavy user, as I am, it means that you can squeeze far more findmypastrecords into a day, than you can Ancestry's. The WO 97 series is a joy: speedy access and full colour scans.

3. Search
There are far more search options on findmypast.co.uk than there are on Ancestry. Ancestry's WO 364 records do not allow you to search on regiment, a catastrophic failing that beats understanding. Thankfully they got it right by the time the WO 363 records came on line and on this record set you can now search on:

first name
last name
estimated birth year
residence location
birth county
regiment name
regiment number
keywords

The findmypast.co.uk search would be perfect if it gave the option of a keyword search. It doesn't, and so it doesn't get ten out of ten. It does however offer the following search options:

first name
middle name
last name
country of birth
county of birth
year of birth
town of birth
parish of birth
regiment [drop down list]
year served from
records to search [presumably for when the WO 96 series is added]
number

What's more, you can sort the records by name or year of birth AND you have the ability to include variants in the search. So, search for Simon Smith, tick the variants box and you'll also get Simeon Smith and Sime Smith.

4. Wildcard searching
It's always been a frustration for me with the Ancestry searches that you can't conduct a wildcard search on less than three characters. It's not so bad with name searching, but for number searching - which I use a lot - it can be a right royal pain in the backside. So to give an example, if you're looking for a man with a number beginning with 3, you can't just type in 3*. And if you just type in the number 3, you'll get every number under the sun that contains that number (even though you've ticked the "exact matches only" box). On Find My Past it's a doddle. Wildcard search on one, two or twenty twenty-two numbers (and remember, on Ancestry, if you're just searching on numbers you can ONLY do a wildcard search on numbers of three digits, nothing more, nothing less.

and finally...

5. Results' screen
Call up an original image on Ancestry and it opens in the same window. Call up an image with FMP and it opens in a new window. What's more, even if you've called up the 38th image in a set and have forgotten the name of the man you've been looking for, there he is, transcribed in a handy summary at the top of the page. Want to open a new record? Easy, just go back to the original search screen and find somebody else. With Ancestry, it can be a laborious process getting back to that original screen.

So all in all, FMP wins the search wars as far as I'm concerned AND it's MY great great uncle Bertrand Elam who features in FMP's latest campaigns. See HERE to read more about him. Now if only FMP carried more WW1 records...

Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?

Find out by visiting Ancestry.co.uk. FREE 14 DAY TRIAL. Tens of thousands of service records from the 1850s through to the 1920s.

WW1 Service Records

Ancestry has uploaded the remaining service records from the WO363 series on its website.

After an initial hiccup, the search function for this series now appears to be working better than it was, although it is still far from perfect. I just hope that Ancestry rectifies this soon. I find it amazing that such a large company can release such an important product without any apparent quality control checks.

Unit war diaries of the First World War

Ninety four years ago today, allied forces attacked the German lines at Loos and in diversionary attacks further north. By the end of the day, nearly ten thousand British troops lay dead.

There's an increasing appetite for all things WW1; an appetite that will surely continue to increase as we approach the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of war, the 100th anniversary of Mons, of Festubert, Neuve Chapelle etc.

The majority of our work is concerned with First World War soldiers and even though, thanks to a 1940 bombing raid on London's docklands, the majority of service records for Other Ranks no longer survive, it's still possible in many cases to make assumptions about a soldier's service based on his medal index card (if he has one) and the war diary of the unit to which he belonged.

War diaries often provide a treasure trove of information and are really the primary sources of information (along with Brigade and Divisional diaries) when it comes to the day to day routines of a particular battalion or battery or other army unit.

So if your ancestor's service records went up in flames in 1940, don't despair. Get in touch with us and who knows, you may find him mentioned in a war diary.

Updates - week ending Saturday 15th August 2009

More enquiries this week from Ireland, Australia and of course, the UK; the majority of these concerning First World War soldiers.

It's a frustrating fact of WW1 research that service records for the majority of Great War Other Ranks were destroyed in a bombing raid by Hitler's Luftwaffe in 1940. Those that weren't destroyed by fire were often badly damaged by water from the firemen's hoses. These documents, collectively known as the Burnt Documents, are archived in the WO 363 series at The National Archives. A second series of (undamaged) pension records exists in WO 364 and there are also First World War records in various PIN series. PIN 26 is for men wounded and receiving a pension, PIN 71 is men invalided to pension and PIN 82 is the series for men who died as a result of war service and whose widows subsequently claimed a pension. If your WW1 ancestor was an officer, you stand a good chance of finding him in WO 374 and WO 339.

But if your ancestor's service record has been destroyed, DON'T DESPAIR! It's likely that we can still glean some information about when he joined up and possibly when he was discharged and where he would have served.

First World War medal index cards exist for men who were awarded medals or a silver war badge and we'll check any army service numbers against our extensive database of British Army numbers which extends from 1881 through to 1918. This, as far as we are aware, is a unique and invaluable reference resource which can provide vital clues about your ancestor's service.

Medal index cards refer to the actual medal rolls and if you don't know the battalion in which your ancestor served, these are certainly worth checking. Similarly, the Silver War Badge medal rolls will often give the date and place of birth of the recipient.

Armed with information from the medal index card, the medal rolls and our army service numbers database, we can then think about checking the war diaries. It's unlikely that your relative will be mentioned by name (unless he's an officer or - as an outside chance - a senior NCO) but the diaries are still worth checking. Some battalions buck the trend and mention Other Ranks by name, and in our experience you're more likely to find the name of your ancestor in the early pages of a war diary than for those written later in the war.

So, DON'T GIVE UP! We'll always advise you on our recommended approach and we'll access the relevant files for you. Drop us a line via our GET IN TOUCH page or leave a comment on any of these update posts.


The soldier pictured at the top of this post is Charles Sabourin of the East Surrey Regiment. Charles is a good example of a man with a badly damaged service record in WO 363 (see above) and also an Other Rank who is mentioned by name in the 1st East Surrey war diary. Charles, wounded on 23rd August 1914, is one of several men noted in the war diary as being missing in action. In fact he had been captured by the Germans and, minus his right leg, would be repatriated to England in February 1915. You can read more about Charles Sabourin on the Chailey 1914-1918 website.