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Archiver > INDIA > 1998-03 > 0890974905


From: Ray Osborn <>
Subject: Re: INDIA-D Digest V98 #81
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 17:01:45 +1200


Hi all,

A little snippet re British Army research.

It's usually vital to know a man's regiment, battalion and service number
before further progress can be made - but these can be quite easy to
discover if he served in the 1st World War.

The PRO, Kew has microfiche of the Army & Navy Medal Lists compiled in
1919. This doesn't mean just medals for gallantry - but campaign and
sector medals which every man is likely to have received even if he had
died before 1919.

They are indexed by personal name and give the battalion, regiment, service
number, medals awarded - and usually an indication of where the man went
after the war.

I found both my grandfathers in just a few minutes. One was an Electrician
RN and his record shows that he went to the Admiralty Compass Observatory,
Slough - where I know he served as a civilian after the War. The other was
Army and transferred to the RFC, later the RAF, in 1918 - but I still found
essential data in the Army records.

So even if you need to employ a researcher it shouldn't cost much to do a
search?

An interesting note re the Compass Observatory records. I went to
Greenwich to view same and found that they'd been sealed and stored in a
bomb-proof bunker - as a result of a scare re the radiation emitted by the
luminous dials of instruments at the Observatory which was thought to have
contaminated the documents!!!! Such is life?

Ray
Rotorua NZ

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