WW2 Army Officers

[Bertieone]

http://www.unithistories.com/officers/A ... s_A01.html

[MaryA]

That's quite a comprehensive list Bert, thanks for sharing. Wish there was similar for the rank and file, although there would be too many.

[AndyJ]

Hi Mary,

Sadly there are no comprehensive published lists of other ranks from any point after the First World War. I suspect that the main source for the details which appear on the Unit Histories site will be the Army List which has been published continuously since 1740 (mostly annually, but for some periods, quarterly or half-yearly). Similar lists exist for the Royal Navy (from the early eighteenth century) and the Royal Air Force (from 1919). Technically these Lists are subject to Crown Copyright but I assume that the Unit Histories site have obtained permission to extract the names and other details they have put on their site.

Incidentally, the Unit Histories list of officers is far from comprehensive. I assume that the details of British officers which have been listed so far were provided by individual subscribers based on their own personal research. If this is right then it will take a very long time for the list to be truly comprehensive.

For anyone interested in the Army lists, the National Library of Scotland has a good online collection (albeit incomplete) covering the past two centuries. Fold3 and Ancestry have Army Lists for the period 1882-1962. However, for a complete set of Lists for all three services in paper form, I think the National Archives is the best place to look, and most large public libraries used to hold copies although in my experience they no longer acquire the more modern editions.

Another good source for military officers' promotions is the London Gazette. Their archive has now been completely digitized and hence is searchable online. That said, like a number of archive sites, the Gazette site operates a robots.txt policy which means that searching externally, using google etc, will not necessarily show up any relevant results from the Gazette database.

For other ranks, the best sources are the old comrades' associations which I mentioned in Colin's WWII thread. However these will be fairly patchy, since obviously they will only include names of members of the particular association, and many members won't necessarily get mentioned if they aren't particularly active, say as committee members. Clearly, names of members who have already died are less likely to appear on current association web sites, but posting enquiries on their forums may turn up someone still living who knew the person you are researching.

[MaryA]

Yes thank you Andy. For anybody following your advice it's probably worthwhile to use one of the free offers for Fold3 that come along every so often.