During the two World Wars there was mass mobilization of the populations of the belligerent powers. Both men and women were conscripted to join either the Armed Forces or to do supporting work (e.g. in armaments factories or the Women’s Land Army etc.). Others were involved in Air Raid Precautions, Royal Observer Corps, Local Defence Volunteers / Home Guard etc.
Researching WW1 and WW2 personnel is very popular as the populations at the time were heavy involved in the war effort. There are a few avenues that people often enquire about.
Personnel
Many people like to research their WW1 / WW2 relatives and the main starting point would be their Service Record. Unfortunately a large section of those for the WW1 British Army have not survived but the Naval ones are mostly complete. The RAF was only formed in April 1918 so their Service Records only post-date that event.
Sometimes for WW1 Army soldiers other sources have to be utilized in order to obtain an outline of their service. However, the Service Record is the best document on an individuals service.
The Service Records for WW1 personnel are all in the public domain. The Ministry of Defence is currently transferring the Service Records for personnel who served before the end of National Service in 1963 to The National Archives.
Other sources that are useful are medal records for campaign medals and / or gallantry medals and there is a huge array of such awards.
Unit / Ship / Squadron Histories
There tends to be two aspects regarding this: (1) my relative was in a particular army unit, naval ship or RAF squadron or (2) there is an interest in the history of a unit, ship or squadron. The latter can be because a particular battle is of interest say, Monte Cassino.
Army unit histories center around War Diaries and as their name suggests they are kept during wartime rather than peacetime years. Naval records are often based on Ships’ Logs but some ships were actually land bases and some of the latter were called Accounting Bases.
These Accounting Bases were “small” offices used for administrative purposes such as payrolls and they were created to be a cover name for Combined Operations personnel. There are cases were personnel were killed and the enemy placed the name of their Accounting Base on their grave’s headstone thinking they had come from a seagoing vessel of that name!
RAF records revolve around Operational Record Books (ORBs). These were kept at various levels of formation and they provide a good insight into the operations conducted. Information often includes the objectives or the operation, the names of the crew, the aircraft serial numbers, etc. They make tracing aircrew’s operations possible but they are not very informative about groundcrew.
Researching a vehicle / ship / aircraft
The military kept detailed records for the movement of vehicles between units and the specific vehicle’s Movement Card would detail the dates and units to which the vehicle was assigned.
Larger ships would have kept Ships’ Logs specific to the ship but smaller vessels such as Landing Craft or Motor Torpedo Boats did not keep their own Logs. In the latter case it is the records of their Flotilla that need to be researched.
Aircraft also had Movement’s Card which (like their vehicle counterparts) detail the units and dates to which the aircraft has been assigned.