Filed under What Is Really Free Online? A Method Guide
What should you look for first?
Commonwealth War Graves Commission records are searchable online without charge through the Commission's own site, giving commemoration details for those it commemorates. That search is a commemoration record, not a service record, so use it alongside the service file.
Do not let a familiar surname carry the search. In a large record set, a familiar surname is the weakest filter you have. Begin with the filters the catalogue itself uses, because a search that fights the catalogue structure will return noise however carefully it is worded.
How do you read what you find?
If an entry seems to contradict the previous entry, read the entries between them. The contradiction often dissolves into a transfer, a posting, or a correction. Numbers matter more than names in these files. A service number, a roll number, or a piece reference will survive spelling changes that defeat name searches.
A rank shown without a date is a snapshot, not a career. Find the date it belonged to before you use it to place the person anywhere. Corrections, crossings out and later additions are part of the evidence, not damage to it. A record corrected at the time tells you something changed.
Common traps in this record type
A record set described as complete usually means complete for its own purpose, not complete for yours. Check what the set was made to record. Do not spend a session repeating a search that failed. Spend it on a different record type, a different holder, or a different filter, and note what changed.
A record written later, summarising earlier service, can introduce errors that the original sheets do not contain. Where they disagree, prefer the sheet written at the time. If two records give the same person different numbers, do not pick one and discard the other. Numbers change on transfer, on re-enlistment, and on reorganisation.
The order to work in
Do not start with the record that interests you most. Start with the record that anchors the timeline, and let interest follow the anchor. Keep the timeline open beside you as you work, and add to it as you go, rather than reconstructing it at the end from memory.
- Start from the official holder catalogue or site for the record you need.
- Note whether what is free is an index, a transcription, or a digitised copy.
- Check a transcription against the digitised copy or the catalogue entry before relying on it.
- Plan paid steps, such as copy orders, only after the free finding aids have fixed the reference.
What to open after this one
A next step chosen from curiosity will entertain you. A next step chosen from the timeline will advance it. Prefer the timeline. If the timeline now has a gap with a name on each side of it, the next record is the one that could bridge that gap, and no other record will do.
A useful discipline is to state the next step as a record, a reference, and a question, in one sentence, before you leave this guide. A research project ends, properly, not with a flourish but with a referenced timeline and a list of questions still open.
Primary sources for this guide
Everything here is kept general and tied to official holders, so check the current position with the holder for your own case. The guide is educational information only: it is not personal professional advice, it is not a lookup service, and it settles nothing about any one person's service.