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The service records of British Army Other Ranks (ie anyone other than Commissioned Officers) who served during the period 1914 until about 1920 are not entirely straightforward to research and the success rate is not tremendously good, - PRO's estimate is about 40% overall. Enemy bombing during the Blitz of 1940 set ablaze the storage facility in London where the bulk of the papers were held, and many of the records not destroyed outright were badly fire and / or water damaged. To some extent the losses have been made up by the release of records originally held by the Ministry of Pensions, the so-called "unburned" series of documents.
As with the service records for Other Ranks the files for Officers are hugely
variable in terms of content, but unlike the OR's files they tend to make little
reference to the man's actual service, and they certainly dont set out his military
career or (to any great extent) the actions in which he may have been involved
or the places where he may have served. In the main those details have to be
built-up from other sources, however the "Officer Service Records"
can be hugely informative from a genealogical point of view, and they can be
very revealing with regard to woundings, subsequent Medical Boards and recuperation,
and pension issues. Matters of discipline and Courts Martial also appear fairly
frequently.
The files of Officers who died in service often contain material relevant to
the circumstances of death, copies of the War Office telegrams notifying that
the man is either "missing" or positively known to be dead, lists
of recovered personal possessions to be returned to the next-of-kin, details
of the terms of the man's will, and other diverse and sundry matters.