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Tom Tulloch-Marshall |
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Tom Tulloch-Marshall |
The British Army 1914-19
Researching Officer's "Service
Records"
likely success rate ~ typical content ~ Regular Army, Territorial Force, Royal Flying Corps, or "famous" !?
 "success rate", the good news, and the "bad" |
First of all, here is the good news - the success rate of searches for "Officer's Service Records" (PRO's title, not mine) for the Great War period and up till about 1921* is much better than it is for the service records of Other Ranks; and the "bad" news ? - they're not really "service records" at all ! [*The official cut-off date for the release of the Officer's service files is the 31st March 1922 - i.e. the Officer should have been discharged by that date and not subsequently re-enlisted, though there are exceptions - even some men who saw some form of WW2 service]. |
| typical content | As with the service records for Other Ranks the files for
Officers are hugely variable in terms of content, but unlike the OR's files
they tend to make little reference to the man's actual service, and they
certainly dont set out his military career or (to any great extent) the actions
in which he may have been involved or the places where he may have served.
In the main those details have to be built-up from other sources, however
the "Officer Service Records" can be hugely informative from a genealogical
point of view, and they can be very revealing with regard to woundings,
subsequent Medical Boards and recuperation, and pension issues. Matters of
discipline and Courts Martial also appear fairly frequently.
The files of Officers who died in service often contain material relevant
to the circumstances of death, copies of the War Office telegrams notifying
that the man is either "missing" or positively known to be dead, lists
of recovered personal
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| Regular or Territorial, Royal Flying Corps, or "famous", even ! | There are two main series of WWI Officer's "service records", one
covering men who saw service in the Regular Army and the second covering
those who served in the Territorial Force. It might therefore be necessary
to search both series if indices if the man's form of service is not definitely
known, - the "Regular" indexes being the easier to deal with as they generally
give the officer's attachment(s) against his name (ie "Smith, John 79" would
be a man who served in the 79th Foot, The Queens Own Cameron Highlanders)
which makes it reasonably easy to identify the correct man.
The Territorial indexes can be slightly irritating as they generally just give surnames and initials, no attachments, so it is sometimes necessary to examine several files before the correct man is identified. Care should also be taken when trying to identify an officer in the PRO's on-line database ("procat") as it is very common for second or third initials to be omitted there; for example a man who appears in the medal records or the Army Lists as, say, PJ McSporran will quite possibly be electronically indexed as McSporran P. There are a few "angles" in the indexing of these records, for example an officer appearing in the Regular indexes with a "vowel" reference against his name may in fact turn out to be filed (and indexed correctly) amongst the Territorial records. Officers who firstly saw Army service and then went on to serve with the Royal Flying Corps often have separate service files amongst the Army records (as well as RFC / RAF records), and the files of some "notable individuals" have been removed from the regular file runs and have been indexed and filed separately, mainly for document security reasons. This applies to the likes of Wilfred Owen, TE Lawrence, etc. |
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