Military/Service records

With the centenary of the First World War approaching, there has been a lot of interest in military and service records of family members. Below are some useful sites for locating military records and other information about Australians who served in military conflicts and records of British soldiers in Australia in the early days of settlement.

• AIF Project - provide details on the 330,000 men and women who served overseas in the (First) Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1918.
• The Australian National Archives has put all Australian First World War Service Records on line, and many World War 2 are also now becoming available
• World War II Nominal Roll - provide brief details of WW2 service personnel.
• Nominal Roll of Australian Veterans of the Korean War - provides information from the service records of individuals who served during the Korean War
• Australian War Memorial - provides biographical databases such as nominal commemorative and honour rolls, honours and awards, Australian Army war diaries, wounded missing and prisoner of war files and general information about Australian involvement in overseas conflict and peacekeeping.
• Mapping our Anzacs - investigate Australian WW1 service personnel by locality of birth or enlistment
• Debt of honour register (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) - lists details of men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two world wars and Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action in the Second World War
• Australian War Graves in South Africa 1899 - 1902 - a searchable database of information from Australian Boer War memorials
• Oz-Boer database
• Soldiers and marines index 1787-1830
• Australia's redcoat settlers
• Military Historical Society of Australia
• Digger History - an unofficial history of the Australian & New Zealand Armed Services

Crowdsourcing Army for World War 1 archives

Operation War Diary is a cooperative effort by the British National Archives, the Imperial War Museum and crowdsourcing website Zooniverse aimed at making previously inaccessible data available to academics and amateur historians alike, creating a formidable “hive mind” concept to offer fresh perspectives on the First World War.
First World War unit diaries, digitised by the British National Archives, allow us to hear the voices of those that sacrificed their lives and are even more poignant now as there are no living veterans who can speak directly about the events of the war.
More than 10,000 people worldwide have volunteered to tag names, locations and other key details in the diaries since the site’s launch eight weeks ago and officials say their collective work — more than 260,000 named individuals and 332,000-plus locations — is equivalent to two years of archival work.
More than 200 diaries have already been verified using the data to digitally map and analyse patterns and trends in the four-year, unit-driven global conflict. Ranging from cover pages to maps to narrative reports, the diaries are catalogued by theatre of operations, unit and dates. Users can then select a diary “to work on” and provide missing pieces of the puzzle. Once completed, all of the data produced by Operation War Diary will be available for free. If you are interested in joining in, there is a ten minute tutorial to get started.
The story of the British Army on the Western Front during the First World War is waiting to be discovered in 1.5 million pages of unit war diaries. Operation War Diary needs your help to reveal the stories of those who fought in the global conflict that shaped the world we live in today.
Further information is available in an article by Joshua Rhett Miller  at  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/27/website-uses-collaboration-to-analyze-wwi-diaries-documents/

State Library of NSW WW1 Diaries

At the end of the War, in 1918, the State Library embarked on an extraordinary collecting drive for soldier’s diaries, led by principal librarian William Ifould who recognised their historic value for future generations. Ifould believed the records should be “permanently preserved [in the Mitchell Library] with the diaries and journals of all the great Australian explorers, navigators, and statesmen and others whose names will be forever connected with the history of the Commonwealth.”

The Library has been adding to this extensive WWI collection of diaries, letters and related materials including maps, photographs, artworks, posters, books and objects since 1918.

The Library now holds over 1,100 WWI diaries by soldiers, doctors, nurses, stretcher bearers, journalists and artists from right across Australia and New Zealand. The diaries hold compelling personal stories of conflict, mateship and adventure!

The WWI diaries are now being digitised and transcribed, to be freely available on the State Library's new website, to be launched in July 2014 as part of its WWI centenary program (2014-2019).

You can search the ever-growing list of names for someone you may know at http://ccc.sl.nsw.gov.au/ , but the State Library would also like to hear from anyone that is able to add to their information. Check the list of names on the website and perhaps you can add your stories and photos of your loved one – how was their role in WW1 commemorated and what happened to those who returned home?

Australia & New Zealand share WWI archive

It was announced on Remembrance Day, a day to mark the anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War, that Australians and New Zealanders will be able to access a shared archive of World War I records online to commemorate the Anzac centenary at Discovering Anzacs website.
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was a First World War army corps which comprised troops from the First Australian Imperial Force and 1st New Zealand Expeditionary Force that was formed in Egypt in 1915 and operated during the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey.
The Discovering Anzacs website, developed by the National Archives of Australia, went live on Remembrance Day and Archives New Zealand will make their World War I records available on the site from April 2014.
As well as providing access to digitized Australian and New Zealand service records from World War I, the website will contain other records including files on internment, munitions workers and the Boer War. 

First World War Portal

The British National archives are launching a new First World War portal and announcing plans to mark the centenary of the First World War with an extensive programme, spanning a five-year period from 2014 - 2019. The programme, First World War 100, which has primary sources at its heart, aims to attract a new audience for archives during the centenary, as well as offering historians and regular archive users fresh insights into this landmark conflict. The National Archives will open its collection of millions of First World War records through a rolling series of digitised record releases, including the unit war diaries, online and on site events and education resources from 2014, all of which will be accessible through this new portal. Online collections - such as medal cards, service records and prisoner of war interviews - and resources including the popular My Tommy's War blog posts form part of the new First World War portal and ongoing centenary programme to draw attention to lesser-known series of records and help people to discover the stories behind the war. The full news article can be found at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/885.htm

UK War Wills

During the First World War final handwritten wills were kept by U.K. troops and other Allied troops in their pocket service books and tucked into their uniforms. Now those original paper records that survived are preserved in 1,300 boxes inside a temperature-controlled warehouse run by data company Iron Mountain in Birmingham, UK. The last wishes, thoughts and concerns of more than 230,000 soldiers who died on the front line during World War I are now to be made available online. The wills, which are owned by Her Majesty's Court and Tribunal Service (HMCTS), are being digitised in time for next year's centenary of WWI. The huge online archive is also as part of a larger project to make all war wills publicly available, dating from the Boer War to the Falklands. BBC News was given access to the first batch to be made available online, and the full article can be read at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23861821

World War 1 Centenary

There has been a real push for World War 1 records with the centenary of Gallipoli approaching. Family Search has released 19 million UK WW1 Service Records, part of 23.9 million indexed records relating to Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, England, Italy, Mexico and the United States. As well as the UK service records, there are over million US World War 1 Draft Registration Cards.
Continuing on the World War 1 theme, the Imperial War Museum in London has set up the First World War Centenary Parnership. This partneship is a network of nearly 1,000 lcoal, regional, national and international cultural and educational organisations led by IWM (Imperial War Museum). Together, they will present a global program of cultural events and activities, and digital platforms to enable millions of people worldwide to discover more about life in the First World War. The partnership gives each member a stronger collective voice, visibility through the First World War Centenary brand and website, access to a wealth of expertise and resources and the opportunity to promote events through a centenary calendar on 1914.org. You can read more about it at http://www.1914.org/partners/ 
Mosman Library has joined the partnership http://mosman1914-1918.net/project/blog/first-world-war-centenary-partnership-needs-you  and lists some other Australian partners as well. 

Mosman 1914-1918

Accountant, clerk, farmer, storeman, nurse are just some of the 1,500 men and women of Mosman who enlisted during the First World War. Who were they? What did they look like? Where did they go?

To commemorate the centenary of World War One, Mosman Library is creating an innovative online resource to collect and display information about the wartime experiences of local service people (http://mosman1914-1918.net/ )

The project aims to use web technologies to link previously unconnected documents and information. It intends to share all tools & techniques developed with other libraries & community groups for use in their digital history & commemorative projects. The project is supported by a State Government Library Development Grant.

Leading the team is a pioneer in this field, Dr Tim Sherratt (Mapping Our Anzacs (http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/), Invisible Australians (http://invisibleaustralians.org/).

Mosman kicked off the project with a BUILD-A-THON (http://mosman1914-1918.net/project/events/build-a-thon) on Saturday 11 August. 

All are welcome to come along and join the team. Subscribe to the newsletter for updates, follow the blog and attend events.

Images of World War I Australian servicemen

The National Archives is now able to share 500 digital images of Australian World War I servicemen which were received from the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA).

These images were identified by DVA staff member Courtney Page-Allen, a recipient of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. To find them, she spent 18 months searching through the 16,000 World War I images held in the Bonds of Sacrifice collection of the Imperial War Museum, London.

The digital images provided to the National Archives include photographs taken in London studios while servicemen were on leave and occasional newspaper clippings.

these portraits are currently being added to the Mapping Our Anzacs website, where you can search for an image and related service record. You can also browse the names of servicemen (word, 40kb) whose portraits have been received. Portraits for personal use may be downloaded and printed.