Filed under Home Front and Auxiliary Services: A Method Guide
What should you look for first?
ATS home service follows the personal file method, with postings to home units, depots and establishments. The posting, not a general ATS label, tells you where and in what role one woman served.
A search term that returns nothing in one catalogue may return everything in another, because catalogues index different fields. Try the holder catalogue directly. Fix the person first, then the record. Searching for a record before you have fixed the person is how two people become one timeline.
Reading what the record actually says
Look for what the entry does not say, as well as what it says. A missing expected entry, a blank column, or a skipped date is itself a finding. What looks like a sudden posting, promotion or move often has its explanation in a correction, a marginal note, or an entry on the next sheet. Compare the entry with the next dated entry before you interpret either. Meaning in these records often sits in the change between two entries, not in one entry alone.
Dead ends to expect here
A search that works for one service may fail for another, because services filed differently. A method that fits the Army may mislead in the Navy, and vice versa. Where a record set is arranged by unit rather than by surname, a surname search alone will miss it. Mirror the catalogue structure, and the record set opens up.
- A patchy or lost local record.
- An organisation whose papers were never centrally filed.
- A home posting mistaken for armed forces service.
- A photograph that suggests a role the records do not support.
Working through it in order
If a step fails three times with three different filters, stop and change the record type. Persistence with one record type past three failures is rarely rewarded. A step that involves another person, a holder, an archive, or a relative, should be prepared before it is taken. Unprepared requests get vague answers. A step is finished when its finding is written down with a reference, not when the record has been read. Reading without writing is not research, it is browsing. If a step produces two candidates, keep both, with their filters, until a record separates them. Discarding one early feels tidy and is often wrong.
- Fix the organisation, the place, and the dates from what you already know.
- Check whether that organisation left central records, local records, or both.
- Search the local archive for the place of service, not only the national catalogue.
- Test every local list or roll against the personal details you already hold before adding it to the timeline.
The next record in the chain
Ask what single fact would most strengthen the weakest link in the timeline, and let that fact choose the next record. The end of a guide is a good place to review the timeline for unreferenced entries. Remove them, or mark them, before they harden into facts. Work from the record, not from the story, and let the timeline stay shorter than the story for as long as it needs to.
Primary sources for this guide
Claims in this guide are kept general and point to official holders, so you can check the current position with the holder itself. This guide is general educational information only. It is not personal professional advice, it does not offer a record lookup service, and it does not determine any individual's service.