1. Why use this guide?
This guide provides details of the documents held at The National Archives which can be used to trace the records of service of individual soldiers who served with the British Army in the First World War. You will find advice on what types of documents are available, what kind of information they contain and how you can view them. For information on officers see our British Army: First World War officers' research guide.
2. Essential information
About six to seven million men served as soldiers (at ranks other than commissioned officers) in the First World War. However, most army service records were destroyed by enemy bombing in 1940. About two million army service records either survived the bombing or were reconstructed from pension records. As a result, there is an approximately 40% chance of finding the service records of a particular soldier.
3. British Army service records
The surviving British Army service records from the First World War are held at The National Archives in record series WO 363 and WO 364, available to view online and searchable by name in the Military Records section of the Ancestry website. In the main they cover soldiers who served between 1914 and 1920 but include regular soldiers who may have enlisted as early as 1892 for 22 years' service. However, they also contain a small number of stray service records of pre-war soldiers who did not serve from 1914 to 1920.
They should include the papers of:
- soldiers discharged between 1914 and 1920
- soldiers killed in action between 1914 and 1920
- soldiers who served in the war and died of wounds or disease without being discharged to pension
- soldiers who were demobilised at the end of the war
They should not include the discharge papers of:
- regular soldiers who continued in the army after 1920
- soldiers who transferred to another service, taking their service record with them
3.1 War survivors and war dead: WO 363
The records in document series WO 363, sometimes referred to as the 'burnt documents' because they survived the bombing in 1940, consist of about 20% to 25% of the original total. They are searchable by name online at Ancestry, and relate to soldiers:
- killed in action
- died of wounds or disease without being discharged to pension
- demobilised at the end of the war
3.2 Soldiers discharged to pension: WO 364
The records in WO 364, searchable by name online at Ancestry, relate to discharges of regular soldiers at the end of their period of service. Men who signed up for the duration of the war did not get pensions: instead they got a gratuity on demobilisation. Their records will not be found at The National Archives unless they received a pension on medical grounds.
WO 364 also covers soldiers discharged on medical and associated grounds, including those who died after the award of a pension.
4. Other First World War records
4.1 Campaign medal rolls
If you are not able to find army service records, try the campaign medal rolls as a next step. For more information see the research signpost on British Army soldiers after 1913.
4.2 Soldiers' effects ledgers at the National Army Museum
The National Army Museum holds a set of soldiers' effects ledgers for April 1901 to March 1960.
These ledgers were created as a list of the monies owed to a soldier who died in service. They do not list any of his personal items that may have been returned to the next of kin. The information they typically contain is: full name, regimental number, date of death and sometimes the place, next of kin and monies paid to the next of kin. The records from 1901 to 1914 also detail the date of enlistment and trade on enlistment.
These records are particularly useful in helping to identify an individual soldier through their next of kin, especially when a high proportion of the First World War service records have been destroyed or damaged.
As these records are not held in the main collections of the National Army Museum but in off-site storage, there is a fee for providing a transcript of an soldier's entry. Please contact the National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London, SW3 4HT.
4.3 Household Cavalry
The First World War service records for soldiers and non-commissioned officers of the Household Cavalry have survived in their entirety. They were not stored with the other regiments' records which suffered the enemy bombing in 1940. The records of the Household Cavalry, including the Life Guards, Royal Horse Guards and Household Battalion are held in series WO 400.
4.4 Guards regiments
The guards regiments retain their own records, which can be accessed by writing to the appropriate regimental headquarters at the following address:
Regimental Archivist
RHQ Grenadier/Coldstream/Scots/Irish/Welsh (select as appropriate) Guards
Wellington Barracks
Birdcage Walk
London SW1E 6HQ
Some of these records were destroyed by enemy bombing while stored in the guards chapel during the Second World War.
5. Further reading
The following recommended publications are available in The National Archives' Library. Where indicated a publication is also available to buy at The National Archives' bookshop.
Norman Holding and Iain Swinnerton, The location of British Army records 1914-1918 (1999)
Norman Holding and Iain Swinnerton, World War I army ancestry (2003) - available to buy
Tracing your family history: army (Imperial War Museum, 1999)
EA James, British regiments, 1914-1918 (Heathfield, 1998)
Gerald Oram, Death sentences passed by military courts of the British Army, 1914-1924 (2005)
Soldiers died in the Great War 1914-19: a complete and searchable database (Naval and Military Press, 1998)
William Spencer, First World War army service records (The National Archives, 2008) - available to buy
Iain Swinnerton, Identifying your World War I soldier from badges and photographs (2001) - available to buy
The National Roll of the Great War, 1914-1918
Using army records (Public Record Office Guides to Family History, 2000)
Simon Fowler, Tracing your First World War ancestors (2003) - available to buy
Ian F W Beckett, The First World War: the essential guide to sources in the UK (National Archives, 2002)
