Tom Tulloch-Marshall Military Genealogy & Operational Records Of The Great War

The British Army 1914-19
Researching Other Ranks Service Records
The "Burned" and "Unburned" series

success rate ~ "unburned" records ~ died in service ? ~ "burned" records ~ typical file content
(and if it turns out that the file was destroyed in 1940, do I get my money back ?)

40% success rate - or is it ? Click on the Lee Enfield above for a breakdown of   the actual results being obtained	The service records of British Army Other Ranks (ie anyone other than Commissioned Officers) who served during the period 1914 until about 1920 are not entirely straightforward to research and the success rate is not tremendously good, - PRO's estimate is  about 40% overall. Enemy bombing during the Blitz of 1940 set ablaze the storage facility in London where the bulk of the papers were held, and many of the records not destroyed outright were badly fire and / or water damaged. To some extent the losses have been made up by the release of records originally held by the Ministry of Pensions, the so-called "unburned" series of documents.
"unburned" records - mainly Ministry of Pensions	There are two major misunderstandings about the "unburned " document class, firstly it is not one single series of files but two distinct series each of which has a miss-file section tacked onto the end; so any examination of the unburned documents does in fact require the searching of four distinct file runs. The second misunderstanding, widely repeated even by PRO staff, is that this series of files relates solely to men who actually received a War Pension. This is most definitely not the case and a very high proportion of the files relate to men who did not have pension qualification. Many files relate to men who's Army service covered only a few weeks or months and were discharged as "unlikely to become an efficient soldier" and other files relate to men with overseas service followed by "normal" non-pensionable discharge. All and any references to "pensionable discharge" should be ignored here.
died in service ?	The one "type" of man to whom the unburned class is not really relevant is the soldier who died in service. Again, advice that this series does not contain any papers relating to these men is not correct, but the number of instances where records have been found here which relate to such men is so small as to be insignificant statistically, and searching the unburned series for such men is probably not a realistic proposition given the time / cost implications and searches for such men should really be restricted to the "burned" series records.
"burned" series documents - relevant to all OR'S, including died in service	The other major set of records are the papers retrieved from the bombed-out building at Southwark, the so-called "burned" series of service records. These papers vary in condition from near perfect to so badly damaged that it is nigh on impossible to read them, but you do have the advantage here that this series does cover all "types" of men who served, regardless of any MoP considerations, death in service, whether served overseas, etc.
release dates for "burned" series papers	All A-Z burned series records have now been released. There is also a separate "misfile" series of films for the burned series.
typical file content	With both the burned and unburned series of records the content from file to file varies enormously, a few files consist of only two or three pages and others run to perhaps forty, fifty, or more. (The shortest  "service record" that I have ever seen is a burned series "file" which consists of a photograph of a man's dogtag (and absolutely nothing else), and the longest is a burned series file  which runs to 132 pages !). Both series may have to be searched for any given man as there is no cross-referencing between them. Neither series is indexed in any way. For some typical examples of the content of the burned & unburned files, click the image on the left.

And finally - if it turns out that there is no file because it was destroyed during the 1940 bombing and fire, do you still have to pay for my time making the searches ? - Dont laugh ! - I get asked that about once a week - and no, I haven't a clue what the logic or thought process which leads someone to ask such a question might be !

The answer is, quite obviously, yes you do have to pay for my time, - but I have a possible solution to the problem - almost as good as one of Baldrick's "cunning plans" - send an e-mail to the following address and demand your money back > milatt@german-embassy.org.uk - that's where the German Military Air Attache to London works - just remind him that ... es war einer iher Fleiegerangriffe welche, die Scaden verursacht hat ... it was one of his dastardly Luftwaffe's air-raids which caused the damage in the first place ! (Some persistence may be required).

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