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The records of British World War 1 soldiers are available on
microfilm at the
National Archives, Kew in classes WO 363 and WO 364.
Unfortunately German bombing in 1940 meant that many records
were destroyed so that only about one-third still survive and
many of these were badly burnt.
The surviving service records of soldiers in WO 363 and WO 364
are being digitised and made available online through the
website
www.ancestry.co.uk.
The National Archives also holds the service records of over
200,000 WW1 officers in classes WO 339 and WO 374. The bombing
in 1940 destroyed the main series of officer records. What
remains are the supplementary records and the detail in them
vary from a single page of information to several pages
including the service record and personal correspondence. It is
possible to search for an individual officer on line although
all you can obtain is the individual’s file reference number,
you cannot download the actual record.
If an officer remained in the Army after 31 March 1922 his
record is still with the Ministry of Defence. You can find
details about obtaining these records on the Ministry of
Defence's website at:
http://www.veterans-uk.info/service_records/service_records.html
If your ancestor died during the war you can find details of
where he is buried or commemorated on the
Commonwealth War
Graves Commission site.
Researching a man who served in the Labour Corps can be a
difficult task.
German bombing in 1940 destroyed the nominal rolls of the Corps
so there are no official records of the company or companies a
man served in.
Matters are complicated by the fact that men enlisted into or
transferred to the Corps in the U.K. were initially posted to
one of the companies based at a Labour Corps Centre like
the Scottish Command Labour Centre at Blairgowrie. He would then
be posted to another company either in the U.K. or overseas.
It was also common for a man to be transferred from one company
to another. For example, 331677 Private Dickinson served
in no fewer than four different companies in the U.K. and three
in France between July 1917 and November 1918.
If you are successful in finding a man's record that shows the
Labour Corps Company or Companies he served in you still have a
difficult task as there are so few Company Diaries.
It may be possible to put together a picture of where a man
served from higher level Diaries but this is a time consuming
task. A researcher can be hired to undertake the task for
you although this may run into tens or even hundreds of hours of
work.
In the case of an individual researching an ancestor you are
welcome to contact me through the Contact
page.
A frequent question asked is "Were photographs taken of men or
Companies?" Photographs of individual soldiers or a small group
of soldiers can often be found. Unfortunately photographs,
like those below,
often do not include details of where or when the photograph was
taken or of the man or men.
Unidentified Labour Corps Soldier
Cap Badge is the Royal Arms as worn by the Labour Corps
until its own badge was approved in late 1918 |
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Unidentified Labour Corps group
Cologne in 1920
Man in front row and at the back both have a Labour Corps cap badge which
indicates the photograph was taken in 1919 or later
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Photographs of Labour Corps companies are not common. A
rare example of a whole Company being photographed is
the one below which shows
78 Company in Germany in July 1919
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