12-01-14, 01:22 PM
(11-01-14, 08:25 PM)nick crisp link Wrote: And on the subject, does anyone know where you would begin if you wished to try to uncover archives that might shed a little more light on what such relatives did? Alas, I don't even know what regiment my step-grandfather served in. All I have is his name, which is a fairly common name and so could easily be confused with others. And I would also like to find out more about other relatives, now passed away, who may or may not have had military roots. My extended family is now small and widespread, and have little knowledge of these things it seems.
Its relatively straightforward process but it can be long winded if like in your case information is missing you have to be a detective.
You have three main choices in the ways to research: -
1. On line site's which you have to pay for.
2. The National Archive (old public records office) which is free.
3. Pay a researcher.
The best combination is a mix of 1 & 2 but that all depends where you live due to travel to Kew, how deep you want to go, how much time you have and how much you want to spend, option three can workout the cheapest sometimes if you don’t have the time and or live too far away form London.
Be aware that most personal WW2 records are still withheld and you can't see them on line or even at Kew unlike WW1 which have now been all released, those that survived WW2 Blitz that is! Once you know his Regt, No etc can prove who you are, you can get a summary of his record e.g. where, when etc from the army records office but it is just a summary often just half a page. If you really get the bug and armed with the summary you can look into regimental history and with a lot of detective work place him in certain time frames match him to actions/battles, if he did anything of note bravery etc he will be named in war diaries which are available at Kew these are the real documents that were penned by his officer and you are touching history.
The amount of information that is available is mind blowing and at first you just can't take it all in but if you preserver you will find out most if not all of what you want to know. Good luck mate lets us know how you get on.
Later