ON THE RECORD
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Memorials to those who lost their lives during the First World War will now be easier to find thanks to the creation of a new free database.
The War Memorials Register, published on the Imperial War Museums (IWM) website, contains approximately 1,025,000 names from the UK’s War Memorials and Rolls of Honour and more than 23,000 images of the memorials.
The database can be searched by individual or memorial. As well as showing the location of the memorial, gravestone or Roll of Service where they are commemorated, it allows researchers to see what further biographical information is available about their military service and date of death.
“There are many excellent war memorial sites the length of the land, but this is the only one that is going to get you a universal search,” Ian Hook, project and public engagement manager at IWM, told Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine.
He added that researchers would be able to “drill down further” with the help of other resources such as IWM’s ‘digital memorial’ Lives of the First World War, which shares details about the men who served in the war ( livesofthefirstworldwar.org).
The database includes the names of civilians killed in the war as well as combatants. Among them are victims of Zeppelin air raids, munitions workers killed in factory explosions, and victims of the sinking of the Lusitania. There are 3,197 women’s names on the register.
The idea of a national War Memorials Register was established in 1989 by IWM director-general Dr Alan Borg with the aim of recording war memorials that were in danger of being lost.
It was originally focused on the value of the war memorials for art history, but expanded to include family history after volunteers began collecting lists of the names recorded on the memorials.
There are more than 75,000 war memorials in the UK, while an estimated 3,000 have been lost.
The new register launched at an event that took place at IWM North in Manchester on 21 March, the 100th anniversary of the start of the Spring Offensive, when the German army launched a series of attacks against the British on the Western Front in a bid to defeat them before the USA fully deployed its army and resources.
IWM chose this date because many families were left searching for their missing loved ones after the Offensive, which will resonate with modern-day family historians searching the database for their own ancestors who died during the First World War.
The first day of the Offensive is the second-worst day in British military history; with 38,500 casualties, including 21,000 soldiers captured, it is surpassed only by the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, on which the British suffered 57,470 casualties. The German system for handling prisoners, and the Red Cross system for informing their families, broke down because of the numbers, leaving many families desperate for news of their relatives.
“If families scratch the surface of their folklore, they may find 21 March 1918 to be a significant date – as were the succeeding weeks,” Hook explained.
The Spring Offensive raged until 18 July 1918, ending with 418,374 British casualties and 688,341 German. It was portrayed in the recent film Journey’s End.
To view the database, go to iwm.org.uk/memorials.
There are many excellent war memorial sites the length of the land, but this is the only one that gives you a universal search