Centenary of the First World War

Last year was the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. While I've been researching my family tree I've found a number of relatives who joined and served in the army between 1914 and 1918. I've used two main websites for my research: Ancestry UK and Find My Past. There are millions of military records available to download through both, but they are subscription sites. However, if you don't wish to pay an annual fee and you have a library membership then these records are available for free as long as you access the sites from within your local library. Occasionally both sites have free weekends where most of their records can be viewed and downloaded without paying. It's worth following their Twitter accounts to spot these: https://twitter.com/ancestryuk, https://twitter.com/findmypast

Ancestry UK

Ancestry have their own dedicated First World War landing page at
http://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/uk/world-war-1

As mentioned above most records require a subscription to view them. But there are a few free record sets including the British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920. This record set gives information on which medals were awarded to the soldiers.

Find My Past

On Find My Past you can search their military records at http://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-united-kingdom-records-in-military-armed-forces-and-conflict

They also they have a separate dedicated First World War website called IWM Lives of the First World War. This site is partnered with the Imperial War museum. There are a large number of soldiers listed, the records seem to be generated from the British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards mentioned above. The website enables users to create "Life Stories" of the soldiers who are listed by filling in any historical gaps. You can update photos and documents that you own and expand the soldiers online military history.

I've managed to find and download a large number of records from both sites but you might find that there are a few gaps: a large number of First World War records were destroyed by a German bombing raid in the Second World War. I seem to have been fairly lucky with my ancestors and I will be sharing some of the details in future blog posts.