Tracing your tree - Military Ancestors

One of the most common types of enquiry that we receive here at Hull Central Library concerns family members who have served in the Armed Forces. I'll talk about Royal (and Merchant) Navy records in a later issue, but here's how you go about finding an ancestor who served in the British Army.
If your ancestor was killed during the First or Second World War then it's a very easy job, for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (the people responsible for maintaining all the war cemeteries) keep very detailed lists. If you can use the Internet, then simply look at their website www.cwgc.org and type in the name you're looking for - you'll find the answer in seconds. If you can't use the Internet, then you'll have to come in to the Reference Section at Hull Central Library and search through over 90 books. These lists, incidentally, also give the names of all civilians who died as a result of the Blitz.
Army Service Records give a tremendous amount of detail. Records for soldiers who joined after 1920 are still retained by the Army, who will release them to the next-of-kin for a payment of £25 (write to the Army Personnel Centre, 65 Brown Street, Glasgow G2 8EX). Older records have all been transferred to The National Archives at Kew, West London. They won't do the search for you, so you'll have to visit and search for yourself, or employ a researcher to dig them out for you. The snag is that the WWI records were all stored in a building that was bombed by the Luftwaffe in WW2, and over half of them went up in flames!
We're very lucky that a local researcher, Mr Malcolm Mann, has done a marvellous job indexing newspaper articles about local servicemen and women. The Mann Indexes can be consulted at the Hull Local Studies Library in Albion Street.