Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Database plan of WW1 fallen
Lanarkshire family history society has been awarded a lottery grant to create a database of the county’s fallen in World War I.
The finished project will contact information on all those who died on the battlefields in France and Flanders, and the engagements at Gallipoli, Salonika, Mesopotamia, Sinai and Palestine, as well as those who died at sea and in the air during the conflict.
Details to be included are each serviceman’s number, rank, battalion, brigade, regiment, unit, squadron or ship, plus how and where each individual fell and where they are interred or commemorated.
Now Advertiser readers are being asked to get in touch with the organisation to ensure their loved ones’ details can be added to the database, which is being supported by a grant from the Heritage lottery fund.
Society representatives say: “The aim of the project is to provide families and interested parties with as much information as possible to help them research their ancestors and relatives.
“Many servicemen are named on more than one memorial, with schools, universities, churches, sports clubs, places of work, Masonic lodges and family headstones often commemorating those who died in the Great War.
“Readers are encouraged to get in touch so that relatives’ details can be added to the list; and enquiries from members of the public regarding local men who lost their lives in the Great War are welcomed.”
To contact the project – or to arrange for a presentation to a school or community group on the topic – email fallenww1-lanarkshirefhs@hotmail.co.uk.
Other military queries can be sent to military-lanarkshirefhs@hotmail.co.uk; while visitors are welcome at the society’s research centre at Merry Street in Motherwell, which is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays from 12 noon to 3pm, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays (except the second Thursday of each month) from 7pm to 9pm.