PROFESSIONAL LONDON BASED INDEPENDENT
HISTORICAL RESEARCHER & RECORD SEARCHER

British WW1 Army records have been extensively consulted since they were released into the public domain in 1996.

The official release of WW1 personnel records in November 1996, plus subsequent releases, has provided family researchers, medal collectors, military historians, demographers and academics alike with a superb range of new material.

WW1 other ranks service folders are now fully surname indexed and digitized and are online with Ancestry. The personnel archive originally consisted of around 6,000,000 records. Of these only ca 3,900,000 folders have survived loss in WW2. The material is divided into Service Records, which cover men who survived or may have fallen in service, and Pension Records which broadly speaking cover time-served men discharged between 1914-1920 and men medically discharged between 1914-1920.

All WW1 other ranks papers have been fully indexed and digitized and can be found online at www.ancestry.co.uk Also online with Ancestry is the whole collection of WW1 Campaign Medal index cards.

Records covering regular and temporary officers have been released completely up to about 1920-1922. These have not yet been properly surname indexed or digitized and are not yet precisely indexed online. They can be found in Series WO 339+374 at the National Archives and are still presented in hardcopy.

WW1 records are not complete! It must be stressed that only about 45% of soldiers’ papers and around 85% of officers’ papers have survived. The records of the ranks do not follow any general uniformity. Those of officers tend to contain mainly personal and medical details and matters relating to probate. There is no guarantee that dates and places of birth, next of kin or other genealogical facts will be found contained in any folder. Some files contain a page or two whilst others may have up to 80 sheets. In many instances folders of other ranks from the pre 1914 record date frame may also be found in WW1 records. However, in many cases there is no WW1 record and the only available papers may have to be searched for in pre-1914 papers. Folders of many officers who relinquished service before 1922 may also still be in the custody of the MoD. It should not go unmentioned that the contents of a lot of WW1 folders were extensively weeded-out at earlier dates. Some inter-war folders have ceased to exist as well.

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