2IÀFHU 5HFRUGV Explained
I felt that I should follow up on Janet Digby’s letter (January), where she highlights confusion about whether the First World War British Army officers’ records were totally lost or not in the 1940 Arnside Street fire during the London Blitz in the Second World War. In Phil Tomaselli’s original article he claimed that this was the case, yet Janet found (undigitised) records for WW1 Army officers in WO339 at The National Archives (TNA). The truth of the matter is that Phil was correct, but I can explain why Janet was questioning this.
There were two quite separate and different sets of WW1 British Army officers’ records. The more important set was the operational service records, which contained personal information, promotions, postings, enlistment, discharge, wounds, awards, medals etc and which was completely lost in the fire (of the other ranks’ service records, approximately 65 per cent were lost – the salvaged are now called the ‘Burnt Records’).
The second and quite separate set was the WW1 British officers’ personal correspondence files, which were stored separately and survived. These are now at TNA in WO339 (Regular and Emergency Officers) and WO374 (Territorial and Temporary War Commissioned Officers) with a finding aid index on Findmypast. co.uk. These files (but not every officer bothered to open one) contain a complete exchange of correspondence between the officer and various Army officialdom, especially when the man was wounded or was sick and a medical file was opened. For the correspondence file to be better understood, Army clerks often made duplicate pages of the officer’s operational file pages, such as his Statement of Services, application for a commission and unit postings, but this is always a lucky-dip affair.
To use the Findmypast name index, go to ‘British Army Service Records’ (via the ‘A–Z of Record Sets’ link), enter the target officer’s name, then scroll down to the ‘Series’ box and enter in turn ‘WO339’ and ‘WO374’, before clicking ‘Search’. To access the files, either make a personal visit (free) to TNA, or engage a local record agent/ researcher who visits TNA on a regular basis and request that the contents are digitally photographed and sent to you, perhaps by dropbox.com (or similar transfer method), which is cheaper than photocopies. Graham Caldwell, Melbourne, Australia
EDITOR REPLIES: Thank you for this clarification for other readers.