CWGC and HMSO (Commonwealth War Graves
Commission & His Majesty's Stationary Office)
There are two fundamental sources of information with regard
to Officers and Other Ranks who died in service; neither of them goes
anywhere near to giving you a detailed view of the man's fate but
both provide information which can be essential to further research, especially
if a service record or other relevant information is not readily to hand.
The HMSO (His Majesty's Stationary Office) lists will give you the date
and classification of the man's death (kia, dow, or d) and very often
a precise unit attachment if that is not already known. The CWGC (Commonwealth
War Graves Commission) records will confirm the man's date of death and
will tell you where he is buried or commemorated (which in itself can
be an important pointer for further research) and they may give you further
information regarding unit attachment and such things as next of kin and
home address, which is not given in the HMSO lists.
One minor
point of common misinterpretation involving the CWGC records is that you
should not read anything into their note of the date of the man's death,
- it is simply that, the date upon which he died; CWGC do not classify
the nature of the man's demise, that must be gleaned from either the HMSO
data or a service record if one survives.
Killed in action
Actually discovering whether an Officer or Other Rank was killed
in action is, barring the very occasional error in the official listings,
quite a simple matter. He will appear in the HMSO listings of war dead as
"kia" and his date of death and unit attachment at the time will be confirmed.
Tracing the location and often the circumstances of death then becomes
a fairly simple matter (using the relevant war diaries) provided that
his precise unit attachment at the time of death can be established
.
The HMSO listings are quite adequate
in this respect for Infantry and some other branches, however they are
generally of no use if the man was in one of the larger conglomerate units
such as the Army Service Corps, the Labour Corps, Royal Field Artillery,
etc. For men in the latter the CWGC records sometimes provide information
additional to the HMSO listings, but that cannot be relied on and it is
normally necessary to fall back on the medal records or (more especially)
the hope that a service record for the man survives.
Once you move away from research involving Infantry service and
get into the more obscure records for the larger units, then the chances
of success become disproportionately biased towards Officers, - it's a
simple (and probably inevitable) fact that the chances of finding
additional records for a Commissioned man are more likely than for the
Rank & File.
Died of wounds
The basic search methods (and likely stumbling blocks) for an Officer
or Other Rank who is listed as "died of wounds" are exactly the same as
for men who were killed in action. The major difference between these
two official classifications of death is in establishing the likely date
and location of the action / wounding which led to the man's death, which
to a great extent (mainly) depends upon what degree of "immediacy"
can reasonably be attributed to the case being examined.
For example, if you have a man who appears in the HMSO listings
as having died of wounds, and he turns out to be buried in the UK, then
the link between his date of death and the event which led to it is likely
to be remote and consequently unresearchable, unless you
have the good fortune to find that a service record for the man survives
and that service record contains reference to the date upon which
the man was wounded. Once again, the likely success rate is much higher
for Officers than it is for OR's.
On the other hand there are often factors which can
guide you towards a conclusion that the man's death and the event leading
to it were much more closely linked. The classification "died of
wounds" does not by any means imply that there was any great delay between
the man's having been wounded and his demise. On the contrary, experience
shows that a death leading to a "Dow" classification could occur very
quickly after the event, half a day or less is far from uncommon. Much
depends here on factors such as the man's place of burial or commemoration,
- such things often point to the likelihood of how far he had been removed
from the front before his death occurred, and although it is rarely possible
to be precisely certain in these cases it is often possible to make a
reasonable case with regard to the circumstances of death once the relevant
war diaries have been examined. Each case has to be examined on it's merits.
"Died" (natural causes)
The third major classification of death which appears in the HMSO
lists is "died", this appearing in the printed versions of the lists
as "d". This notation means that the man died of natural causes and did
not fall into either the kia or dow classifications. A fairly high proportion
of these men will be found to have burials in the UK, and investigations
into their deaths will fall outside of the research which I undertake.
Research of the military service of these men may still be possible
depending on the information revealed by their medal records and more
especially any service record which may survive. Again, the likelihood
of success will inevitably be higher in the case of an Officer, but it
is impossible to predict how much information may be available about such
a man until the initial investigations are made.
Deserted
The fact that an Officer or Other Rank deserted is normally
revealed in his medal records, with supplementary information to be found
in any surviving service record. Further minor information may be available
in the Judge Advocates records, but that is very time-consuming to research
and the additional value of material to be found there is dubious.
Wounded, and "other sources"
Establishing records of woundings is an area where the difference
between records relating to Officers and those relating to Other Ranks
can be dramatic in the extreme. Apart from the fact that you stand a much
better chance of a service record for an Officer being available (and
such records normally containing the notes of any Medical Boards which
the Officer has attended), it is also quite normal for war diaries to
contain referenced to Officers by name in the event of their being killed
or wounded, going on or returning from leave, hospital admissions, etc.,
etc., whereas such mentions for Other Ranks are rare in the extreme.
(But not unknown - there are quite a few notable exceptions such as the
war diaries of 13th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment during 1916, where
monthly typed lists show men wounded, killed, missing etc on a day-by-day
basis. Names, initials, regimental numbers and the nature of the casualty
are listed. The diaries of 9th Bn East Surrey Regiment contain similar
lists - especially detailed for September 1916). |