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War Poets

From Martin Chown of the War Poets' Association:


"I am on the WPA Committee organising this first study tour to cover the
writings of two lesser known war poets Blunden and Rosenberg- the one who
died, and the one who survived.

A new approach to the literature and perspectives of the First World War
will be taken with this special study tour to the Battlefields on the 95th
anniversary of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Fall In, Ghosts is the first
tour to feature specifically the contrasting experiences and writings of war
poets Edmund Blunden and Isaac Rosenberg, whose reputations at home and
abroad have grown steadily over the past ninety years.

The tour will follow, for Blunden, his classic account Undertones of War.
This has just been re-published by Penguin with a new introduction by
military historian Hew Strachan. Both poets will be illustrated by their
poetry at relevant sites.

I hope you will be able to pass this on to people who might appreciate this
new approach to the literature of the first World War, especially covering
lesser known poets whose voices and experiences covered two years of
warfare, whose poetry was either fortunate to be sent home and published, or
lost in the mud, and published later.

The flyer can be found directly on the website: www.warpoets.org and the
organisers have a closing date of 30 April 2011."

Army Ancestors on-line - 18th & 19th Centuries

This is a general overview of on-line sources to check. It is not complete and will be updated.

Find my 18th and 19th Century Army Ancestors

Find My Past has published the complete WO 97 series of Army pension records on-line. These, as the title suggests, are records for men who left the army between 1760 and 1913 and received a pension. There are over one million records in this series.

WO 96 is the series for militia attestations and covering the period 1806-1915. There are around 500,000 records in this series and these too will be available on the Find My Past website from September 2011.

Ancestry has the WO 363 and WO 364 series on its site. Although both record series are supposedly exclusively First World War series for soldiers' service papers and soldiers' pension papers respectively, there are many thousands of service records and pension records which pre-date WW1. The earliest I have found dates back to 1850.

Find My Past has:

Army Lists for 1787, 1798 and 1878 (Officers)
Peninsula Medal Roll 1793-1814
The Waterloo Medal Roll 1815
Harts' Army Lists for 1840 and 1888 (Officers)
Indian Army and Civil Service List 1873
Anglo Boer War Roll 1899-1902

Ancestry has:

UK military campaign & award rolls 1793-1949 (BUT excluding WW1 and WW2)
UK naval medal and award rolls (BUT excluding WW1 and WW2)
UK casualties of the Boer War 1899-1902 (inferior to the Find My Past roll)

Dix Noonan Webb has published the following FREE medal rolls:

Military General Service Medal 1793-1814
Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840
Army of India Medal 1799-1826
Indian Mutiny Medal 1857-1859

Finally, Kevin Asplin has nominal rolls, casualty rolls and medal rolls too numerous to mention on his hugely useful site.

"F**k stables, I'm finished soldiering."

The Gloucestershire Regiment soldier staring out of various Find My Past campaigns is none other than my great uncle Bert Elam. He was my paternal great-grandmother's brother and a regular soldier who, as a 19-year-old, first joined the British Army on the 12th June 1894. Surviving records in WO 97 (available to view via the Find My Past website) show that he joined the Wiltshire Regiment in London. Just three months later though, on the 12th September, he was discharged on the payment of a bounty of £10. Whether he paid the bounty, or whether it was paid by his parents, is not stated, and it remains something of a family mystery. His soldiering though, was far from over.

Ancestry.co.uk has 45 digitised pages from his service record in WO 364 which show that far from being deterred by army life, Bert joined up for a second time on the 2nd November 1894. This time he opted for the cavalry, joining the 20th Hussars on the 2nd November 1894 and being issued with a new number: 3819. For whatever reason he deserted the following April, but was apprehended and remanded in custody in May and subsequently spent 21 days in a military prison. Later that year, he was imprisoned on two further occasions for insubordination and, joy of joys, his records contain details of his crimes.

"... at Colchester on 18th July 1895, after having been ordered to stables, said to Squadron Sergt Major J Waldron, "Fuck stables, I'm finished soldiering" or words to that effect."

That earned him 14 days' imprisonment with hard labour. The following month, he repeated his assertion ("or words to that effect") and was rewarded with a similar punishment.

By 1897, and presumably now accustomed to military life, Bert was awarded his first good conduct badge, a second one following in November 1900. The following year, with service in the Boer War under his belt, he elected to extend his service with the colours to twelve years. He was discharged from the army on the 1st November 1906 having served overseas in India, Egypt and South Africa.

On the 1st September 1914, with Britain at war with Germany, Bert joined up for a third time, this time enlisting with the 5th (Special Reserve) Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (number Z/211). He was posted to the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, arriving overseas on the 7th October 1914 and thus qualifying for the 1914 Star and clasp. He received a slight gunshot wound on the 29th April 1915 but appears to have remained in France, only returning home on the 11th July that year due to eye problems as a result of gassing. He would spend 47 days in hospital in England with conjunctivitis.

Bert remained with the regiment until the 22nd July 1917 when he was transferred to the 17th Gloucestershire Regiment (number 34768) before finally transferring to the 300th Reserve Company, Royal Defence Corps (number 96495) on the 2nd November 1918. He was discharged from the army for the final time on the 25th February 1919.

The photo of him that appears in the Find My Past campaigns dates to 1917 or 1918 and shows Bert wearing his Gloucestershire Regiment cap badge and his 1914 Star ribbon.

Pre WW1 records in WO 363 and WO 364

It's worth remembering that whilst Find My Past has the Chelsea Pensioners' records - that is, records of British Army Other Ranks discharged to pension between 1760 and 1913 - there are still plenty of pre WW1 records in the WO 363 and WO 364 series over at Ancestry. Even if your ancestor did not serve during WW1 therefore, but may have served prior to WW1, it's certainly worth running a name check on Ancestry - and also being a little sceptical about Ancestry's often far-from-accurate transcriptions.

The earliest record I've found in WO 364 is for Thomas Boland of Tipperary who joined Her Majesty's 94th Regiment of Foot at 8am on the 17th August 1850 at Clonmel, and who swore allegiance to the crown three hours later. Thomas later transferred to the 43rd Regiment of Foot and was discharged on the 28th March 1866 aged 33 years and seven months, having served a total of 15 years and 110m days.

However, and this is a big however, if you'd keyed in Thomas's estimated birth year, or indeed his enlistment date into the Ancestry search engine, you'd be sorely disappointed. Ancestry lists his estimated birth year as 1867 and his enlistment date as 1885.

UK Naval Medal and Award Rolls 1793-1972

Another corker from Ancestry:

"This database contains lists of more than 1.5 million officers, enlisted personnel and other individuals entitled to medals and awards commemorating their service with the Royal Navy and Royal Marines between 1793 and 1972. The original medal rolls were compiled by the War Office and are housed at the National Archives of the UK in Kew, Surrey. The rolls include medals awarded for British campaigns and service in Europe, India, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere during the height of the British Empire and into the 20th century. This database also includes medal rolls from the First and Second World Wars.

"While medal rolls do not provide very detailed information, the records can include the name, date, and location of a campaign or service, the recipient’s name, and the regiment or unit name and regimental number. Most rolls were arranged by campaign (or battle), then ship or regiment, rank and surname.

"The records in this collection can be searched by name, medal or award, campaign or service, service date, ship name, and service number. Volumes may also be browsed by medal and medal roll.

About the Medals

Medals were instituted by the British Army in the early 19th century for officers and other ranks for participating in a military campaign, and clasps indicated service in a particular battle. The Waterloo Medal of 1815 was the first campaign medal issued and was awarded to men who took place in the battle (or their next of kin).

Lists were submitted by ship, regiment or unit for persons entitled to receive certain medals or clasps. There are three types of medals in this collection: for campaigns (or battles), for good conduct (or long service) and for gallantry."

UK Military Campaign Medal & Award Rolls 1793-1949

New on Ancestry:

"This database contains lists of more than 2.3 million officers, enlisted personnel and other individuals entitled to medals and awards commemorating their service in campaigns and battles for the British Army between 1793 and 1949. The original medal rolls were compiled by the War Office and are housed at the National Archives of the UK in Kew, Surrey. The rolls include medals awarded for British campaigns in Europe, India, Egypt, Sudan, South Africa, West and Central Africa, China, the Middle East, and elsewhere during the height of the British Empire. The collection does not include WWI or WWII medal and award rolls.

While medal rolls do not provide very detailed information, the records can include the name, date, and location of a campaign or service, the soldier’s name, and the regiment or unit name and regimental number. Most rolls were arranged by campaign (or battle), then regiment, rank and surname.

The records in this collection can be searched by name, campaign, service location and date, and regimental number. Volumes may also be browsed by region, campaign, and regiment or unit."

This is a very nice addition to Ancestry's offering, and of particular benefit to medal researchers.

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...

Five new datasets from FMP

The folk over at findmypast.co.uk have been busy this week. The UK-based genealogy company has launched five new military datasets and completed the uploading of the WO 97 Chelsea Penisoner records. Ancestry.co.uk subscribers will be familiar with some of these new arrivals which in turn have come from the Naval and Military Press stable. Nevertheless, there are subtle differences between both Ancestry's and FMP's offerings which I list below. Furthermore, FMP's Boer War data set, licensed from Casus Belli, is by far superior - both in volume, scope and content - than Ancestry's offering which was published earlier in the year.

DCM citations 1914-1919
More than 25,000 citations to other ranks who were awarded the coveted DCM. Second only to the Victoria Cross in terms of prestige, this award was prized as much by the soldiers of the time, as it is by medal collectors today. The database was originally published in book format by Naval & Military Press and comprised four sections:

Section 1: DCMs won by members of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force; the Foot Guards; and the Yeomanry and Cavalry.
Section 2: Line Regiments.
Section 3: The Territorial Army Regiments including the RGLI/RNVR/RMLI and RMA; the Royal Engineers and the Royal Artillery.
Section 4: The Corps and the overseas forces of the Crown in alphabetical order: Australia; the British West Indies Regiment; Canada; India; Newfoundland; New Zealand; Rhodesia; South and East Africa

Henry Smith, a patient at Chailey, won the DCM during his brief time in France. You can read about him HERE. His DCM citiation reads:

For conspicuous gallantry in action, and for his devotion to duty in finally assisting at the end of the engagement in carrying a wounded officer from the firing line, although wounded himself.

Private Frank Richards of Old Soldiers Never Die fame is also here. His citation reads:

For conspicuous gallantry. During a successful attack, Privates Richards and Barrett took their telephone over the parapet, established and maintained communication. They lay in the open for three hours, and repaired the wire whenever it was cut.

There are some real gems here and this data series is NOT available on Ancestry.

Ireland's Memorial Records of The Great War
Ancestry has had this one for a while. The difference here though, is that on Find My Past you can search by the man's number, on Ancestry you can't. There are 49,000 records here, not to mention some beautiful and touching illustrations.

Naval Casualties 1914-1919
Another Naval & Military Press publication and another data set that can't be found on the Ancestry site. Another of my Chailey men - 16 year old Cecil Langridge - is here, along with nearly 45,000 other sailors who lost their lives during the war to end all wars.

WW2 Prisoners of War
This is a database of PoWs in Europe. Ancestry does have this N&MP data set but you can't search on the man's number. On FMP you can.

Anglo-Boer War Records 1899-1902
This is a stunning database of men and women men and women who served in the British Imperial Forces during the war in southern Africa: soldiers, sailors, nurses and civilians. The database comprises quarter of a million records including a corrected roll of 59,000 casualties. Ancestry published a roll of 54,000 UK casualties earlier in the year but the FMP offering is five times larger and a good deal more detailed.

So all in all, some fantastic records that have been added to FMP's military stable, and it's worth pointing out too that the speed with which images download on the FMP site is infintely faster than those which are available on the Ancestry servers. A back of the matchbox calculation by your truly reckons that the FMP downloads are between three and four times faster than those on the Ancestry site.

Boer War records on line

Ancestry has recently added a new data set: Casualties of the Boer War 1899-1902 In Ancestry's words: This data collection contains the following information on over 65,000 soldiers who either died or were wounded during the Boer War: Force Regiment Battalion Battery/Corps Rank Name Casualty type, date, and place For example: South Africa Field Source, Staff, 3rd Brigade, Major-Genl. MacDonald H., C.B., D.S.O. wounded in Paardeberg on 18/02/1902. The data, which is taken from official casualty rolls, is sortable on First Name, Last Name, Place of casualty / Year of casualty, Regiment and Keywords but unfortunately is only available as part of Ancestry's premium or worldwide membership schemes. 

Another useful source for Second South African War information is The Boer War Register which presents "over 258,700 entries... [including] a fully revised and corrected casualty roll of over 59,000 records." Also see The Anglo Boer War and The National Archives's page on the South African War. Finally, it's always worth running a keyword search at the Internet Archive for military archive material. Type in Royal Fusiliers and you get a number of very useful lists including this listing of recipients of the Queen's South Africa Medal. The image on this post shows British casualties at Spion Kop in January 1900.