Les Tobin gave us a terrific overview of conducting British Military Research. The principal focus was on the records held by the The National Archives at Kew. The TNA on-line catalogue is called Discovery
Les particularly recommended that groupies planning to use the site should complete a (free) registration, then browse the research guidance atoz pages, and check the schedule of (very reasonable) fees Les illustrated the principles of researching at TNS through a case study of the naval service (from 1869) of his family ancestor, Samuel Marshall. TNA records are organised by multi-level labelling in the form XYZ/123/456/789 where XYZ is commonly an acronym of the arm of government responsible for creating (or maintaining) the records and each group of numbers represents layers of information organisation. So the records that Les showed were called ADM 139/895/9443 which descend from the general ADM (for the Admiralty) to the most specific 9443 (Samuel's service number). Les listed other record groups that would be of interest to groupies investigating their own tars or tommies. They include headings for the Army (WO War Office), Royal Navy and Merchant Marine (ADM Admiralty, BT Board of Trade, MT Ministry of Transport) and Air Force (AIR Air Boards, Air Ministry, Royal Air Force). The presentation ended with a list of other sites that may be of interest to family historians seeking their British ancestor's military records.
To see a list of Ancestry British Military Records Search > Card Catalogue and apply the Filters Military and United Kingdom. The corresponding group of FindMyPast United Kingdom Records Armed Forces and Conflict can be found under Search Records > List of All Records. |
The Harbour Canteen at Folkestone was often the last stop in the UK for troops headed for Europe. More than 42,000 men of all ranks from a wide variety of units signed the visitors books. The Step Short project makes those books available for browsing (free) and searching (if you pay an annual subscription).
War Diaries
The National Archive of the UK hold a famous series of records labelled WO95. They are called War Diaries and are the equivalent of the Unit Diaries held by the Australian War Memorial. You can search the available War Diaries. Medal Index Cards
If your ancestor was awarded a UK British medal (remember that Australian WWI medals were also British), then there should be a Medal Index Card held in The National Archives (and also searchable with an Ancestry subscription). For more help on interpreting the information on these cards go to https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/soldiers/how-to-research-a-soldier/campaign-medal-records/how-to-interpret-a-campaign-medal-index-card/ |