An example is shown below. Compared to the First World War, there’s not a lot of infantry in the Second World War, so even if you only know the regiment and they were at Normandy, it’s not an impossible task. - BBC's Learning Portal Choosing to join the Army is one of the biggest decisions that you'll make, but once you've ⦠Again, an army number is often recorded. Army numbers often appear on both envelopes and letters sent by and to the soldier. The army has a single command structure based at Andover and known as "Army Headquarters". However, it has a number of downsides. However, if the soldier you’re researching served in an infantry regiment and you know they served in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Egypt or Sicily etc., then you can often identify the war diaries you need to check relatively quickly. However, if you have a soldier’s army number, then they should be able to find them quickly in their database. After training, they were allocated to their new cap badge, with this same training centre allocated service number. In addition, if your soldier has a common surname, Smith, Jones, Taylor etc. I have found this collection to be very hit or miss. Even if no army number was recorded, they often contain key information which may hold the clue to working out a soldier’s service. The database can be searched on Ancestry. Information listed about the soldiers includes: name, rank, branch of the armed forces, regiment, POW number, and camp information. Take for example Private Reginald Panton, who was killed in action on 12 February 1942 and buried in Pembroke Military Cemetery in Malta. For most armies, this is the basic infantry fighting unit, a formation of eight to 14 soldiers led by a corporal or sergeant and comprising two 'fire teams' each built around one support weapon or light machine gun. Enlistment books ⦠British army. Instead, from 1942, recruits were allocated true Army (as opposed to regimental) âservice numbersâ, and thus, one cannot identify a soldierâs cap badge using their number, only that they had joined from 1942 onwards. The first is a Medal Index Card which is available to view for free on Ancestry. HOW TO JOIN. Unfortunately, a lot of them have been left blank. Nearly all of the journals have to be ordered 48 hours in advance which can make viewing difficult. Email: family.tracing@salvationarmy.org.uk. To find a mentioned in despatches, you’ll need to search a soldier’s name on the London Gazette. All Military in the Card Catalogue Until the English Civil War, England never had a standing army with professional officers and careerist corporals and sergeants. The extract below was taken from The Crossbelts, The Journal of the VIII King’s Royal Irish Hussars: Volume 3: No.1: 1935. Safeguarding. Pre-1920 In ideal circumstances, Part C should record a soldier’s army number, rank, name, regiment and a remarks column “e.g. Also, your success will often depend on the information you already know regarding a soldier’s service and their surname. When searching for a soldier by their name bear in mind that some first names are recorded as initials only. This collection of cards usually records the soldier’s place and date of birth in their catalogue entry. The casualty lists are most useful for those who were wounded or went missing. If you’re trying to find a soldier who served in the Royal Artillery or Royal Army Service Corps and that’s all you know, then there’s very little chance of success. If a soldier died in service, you don’t need a death certificate or permission of the next of kin to order their file. If you’re researching a soldier who died during the war and trying to find their army number, use the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website instead. This is a fee-paying website that offers a free trial period and you’ll be taken to the site if you click on the banner below. This article is more than 3 months old. Not all regiments/corps published a journal but most did and these often contain sections recording births, marriages and deaths where you can find army numbers. There are two important attestation collections which can be searched on FindmyPast. The Life Guards 294001 - 304000. Many of the records can only be found with any certainty if you know the number, unless the man had an uncommon name. Even for common surnames like Smith and Jones, you can often find the correct soldier providing you know some information about their service. The medal records are part of the WO 100 series which contains the names of well over a hundred thousand soldiers with their army numbers for the inter-war and post-war period. When an army number appears, “still serving” was often written in the remarks column. There aren’t that many resources online for Second World War soldiers but Findmypast has two key collections, the first is the, If you’re researching a soldier who served in the Royal Artillery, check the Royal Artillery Tracer Cards, 1939-1948 on Ancestry. The modern system was introduced by Army Order 338 in August 1920. Commissioned officers did not have service numbers until 1920. If you find a soldier in a list of those awarded a mention, make sure you go back in that gazette edition to find the start of the list. Soldiers in the British Army are given an eight-digit number, e.g. These have been indexed on Ancestry and can be searched in Campaign Medal and Award Rolls, 1793-1949 (General Series). Royal Army Medical Corps: 7539001: 7574000: Channel Islands Militia: 7574001: 7657000: Royal Army Ordnance Corps: 7657001: 7681000: Royal Army Pay Corps: 7681001: 7717000: Corps of Military Police: 7717001: 7718800: Military Provost Staff Corps: 7718801: 7720400: Small Arms School: 7720401: 7732400: Army Educational Corps: 7732401: 7733000: Band of the Royal Military College: ⦠This blog aims to guide the researcher through the maze of regimental numbers issued by the British Army between 1881 and 1918. The casualty lists can be searched on FindmyPast which offers a free trial. Often, an army number won’t be recorded on the card. HOW TO START YOUR CAREER IN THE ARMY. War diaries are often your best chance of finding a soldier’s army number. You’ll often find them when a unit is about to embark for overseas service with the nominal roll below appearing in the war diary of the 2nd Battalion Welsh Guards and recording those heading for Boulogne to take part in the defence of the port. To find out if a regiment/corps published a journal, look up its entry in the May 1939 Army List available to view for free on the National Library of Scotland’s website. The British Army Military Book of the Year (#BAMBY) is the Army's own annual literary prize. If a soldier was in an accident or injured themselves badly, especially while training with weapons, they often appear in the daily entry. Expect to receive a response in four weeks. Many soldiers took a generous bounty in 1919 rather than be demobilized and remained in the army. They are Royal Artillery Attestations 1883-1942 and Royal Tank Corps Enlistment Records 1919-1934. There will be a paragraph recording which despatch the men were mentioned in. Army Service Numbers The history of the British army service numbers and the P and Q prefix for the QAIMNS and QARANC British army service numbers, that were in use until fairly recently, were introduced post WWI in August 1920 (Army Order 338). If the soldier you’d like to research died between 3 September 1939 and 31 December 1947, then you can search for them on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s (CWGC) website. However, they are only useful if the soldier in question joined the Royal Artillery prior to April 1942 (when the General Service Corps was formed) or one of the regiments which made up the Royal Tank Corps between 1919 and 1934. Only the 2nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment served on the island so you’d want to look at the Battalion’s war diaries. When you contact the Army, we have a staff of individuals ready to talk to you. These books list the army number of those who were tried for a variety of crimes/offences e.g. If a journal was published, then it will be listed below a regiment’s/corps’ title. In addition, the London Gazette’s search engine is poor and confuses letters, so it will often miss names. Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Militia Attestation Papers, 1800-1915, index - at Ancestry.com ($) I have seen plenty of army numbers on certificates so it’s by no means rare. This important database contains the army numbers of soldiers who served in the British Army past 1920 and were born prior to 1901 whose service records are still held by the Ministry of Defence. There’s a lot of information in the books, with a person’s place of birth, age and next of kin recorded, along with their campaigns and date of discharge or reason for becoming non-effective. If you’re researching a soldier who served in the inter-war period, then a regimental journal may hold the key to finding their army number. Search the daily British Army casualty lists (WO 417) on Findmypast.co.uk (£). Further biographical information can be found on the cards, including their next of kin. Officers will also be shown with their personal number. The Devonshire Regiment was allocated numbers 5,608,001-5,662,000. In 1920, the way the army issued numbers changed. From this information, hopefully, you’ll be able to work out if you have found the correct person. Finding a soldier’s army number is very important if you want to. There weren’t many soldiers who served continuously between the wars, so First World War medal records aren’t particularly useful for working out the army number of Second World War soldiers. The difficulty with relying on a mentioned in despatches is you’re more likely to be faced with multiple individuals with the same name. What was an Army Number or Personal Number? All Army Numbers were scrapped from March 1950 and replaced by the new Service Numbers, which are allocated sequentially, starting at 2000000. The British Army was renumbered in 1920. Army tank brigade equipped with Valentine tanks lined up in Britain. They can tell you where they were dispatched to, what battles they fought in, awards ⦠These cover British Army officers, other ranks and nurses. The British Army is made up of the Regular Army and the Army Reserve. Regimental orders are great documents in this respect, though only found in a small number of war diaries and usually only for units serving in Britain. Army and personal numbers were ⦠All soldiers were given a unique 7 digit number which remained with them throughout their service career. 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An army number was always recorded, described as a service number on the website which will enable you to order their service record. Unfortunately, you will need to know a bit about the soldier’s service to know which war diaries to check. While the Ministry of Defence will search for a soldier if you know their date of birth, many recruits gave a false one. The Ministry of Defence still has these service records and they usually contain First World War records as well. However, it is a war diary’s appendices which offer the best chance. If you believe that somebody is posing as an Army Service Person, trying to fraudulently obtain money from you, we would strongly advise you to cease communication, to not send any money/gift cards and to contact Action Fraud, the UK's national reporting centre for fraud and cyber-crime. This is actually quite difficult to do if you don’t have knowledge of regimental numbers, as you can easily go astray, with some numbering blocks falling within the old regimental number system. The collection is mostly alphabetical and has only been catalogued between the surnames Aaby and Lusted. The British army is on course to miss its targets for the number of recruits it should have by 2020. Theyâre indexed by Service Number, Rank, Full Name and Date of Birth â youâll need to provide as much of this information as possible, together with your relativeâs Regiment or Corps if it is known, to help locate service records. Another document which frequently survives within a family is a Notification of Impending Release, which relates to their demobilisation. The armyâs 2020 strategy, published in 2015, aimed to have 82,000 army ⦠Army Number Search Tool. You can never tell until you order a certificate how much information it will contain. Army numbers are usually recorded on official documents issued during a soldierâs service. An army number is also important if you don’t want to order a soldier’s service record, or while you wait for it to arrive as you can: There are a number of avenues you can pursue to try and find a soldier’s army number, however, in many cases, you will not be able to find it. For example, they will usually provide at least the regiment or corps and often the rank, e.g. This section is useful if you’re researching a soldier who became ill and was sent away for medical treatment, as they don’t appear in casualty lists. The citation cards currently cost £3.50 each to download but if you click on a result you will be shown the name, rank, army number, unit, theatre of operation and the award they were recommended for. [77] [78] Deployable combat formations consist of two divisions ( 1st Armoured and 3rd Mechanised ) and eight brigades. theft, losing property, self-inflicted wounds, mutiny, desertion. It can be difficult to tell which is an army number and which is a regimental number. For example, if you’re looking for the number of an Andrew Boast who was wounded with the Devonshire Regiment in Burma your task will be considerably easier than finding a John Smith who you think may have served in the Royal Artillery. There may also be a section in journals recording promotions, postings, enlistments and discharges. © Site contents copyright QARANC.co.uk 2006 - 2020 All rights reserved. You’ll find men who enlisted in the Hussar, Lancer, Dragoon and Dragoon Guards regiments prior to their mechanization in this collection. Nearly every man of the regiment appears at least once, as they record appointments, training courses and men going on leave. I have a separate page explaining what an army number was and how to find a personal number, the officers’ equivalent. Email me if you’re not sure attaching a copy of the Medal Index Card and I’ll let you know whether you’re looking at an army number. 1950 onwards: Soldiers in the British Army are currently given an eight-digit Service Number. This database contains a listing of World War II British prisoners of war. Equivalent military ranks in the UK Navy, Army, Air Force and US Army, edited by Dr Duncan Anderson of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. You’ll also find army numbers appearing on a variety of other documents in the appendices. It relied on militia organised by local officials or private forces mobilised by the nobility, or on hired mercenaries from Europe. It was used on all of his paperwork, so all of his records carry it. This search tool can match army numbers from the 1920's to the end of World War 2 which was based on the regiment that a soldier joined initially, and the post war numbering system which is army wide. One of the most important is Army Form A.3009 Field Return of Other Ranks. In the worst-case scenario, it will simply record “soldier”. Unfortunately, journals are quite difficult to find. The second system was introduced in 1920 under Army Order 388 with each regiment allocated its own block of numbers: Royal Army Service Corps 1 - 294000 and 10660001 - 11000000. Each man was assigned a number which identified him from the other men. Around 1929, the Royal Artillery’s attestation book changes the information which was recorded and only a soldier’s full name and army number are guaranteed to appear. If you’re researching a relative, ask family members if they have any documents or letters relating to the soldier. During the Second World War, each soldier who served in the British Army was allotted a unique army number, usually on the day they joined or shortly after. It is this number that you need when applying for a post 1920 Service Record. The WO 213 series at the National Archives contains books listing Field General Court-Martials held in both Britain and abroad. A surviving document which is often found within the family is an Army Book 64 Soldier’s Service and Pay Book and an example is shown below. There is often a note regarding what happened to a soldier, for example, if they were sent to the reserve or were transferred to another corps or to a regiment. During the Second World War, the British Army published casualty lists recording officers and other ranks who had lost their lives, were wounded, went missing or were confirmed as prisoners of war. On Reginald’s register entry for the CWGC, it was recorded that he was the “son of Henry Charles and Alice Panton, of Chatham”. 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