It was announced today that Ancestry.co.uk has now posted the entire collection of the British WWI Service Records. Since the press release mentioned Basil Rathbone (Remember the Sherlock Homes movies?), I did a search for him, and found him soon enough, even though the indexer misspelled his name as Basit. As you can see, the documents themsleves clearly show the name as Basil, but I digress…
This database is wonderful! Too bad that most of the American WWI service records were destroyed by fire… Following is an excerpt from the Press Association article.
The army service records of more than two million British soldiers who served during the First World War have been published online for the first time.
Ancestry.co.uk said full military careers from 1914 to 1920 were included in the collection, stretching to an average of 16 pages per soldier, including medical data and service history.
The records include details of famous names such as Basil Rathbone, the actor who portrayed Sherlock Holmes in 14 films, and playwright Noel Coward.
Details are also revealed of a soldier who enrolled under a false name to avoid being traced by his mother, solving a family mystery that had spanned 90 years.
Ancestry.co.uk international content director Dan Jones said: “The service records will provide millions of people with information to help them better understand what their heroic ancestors were like as soldiers, including their performance in battle, their health and details of their general appearance.
