Filed under Gallantry Awards and Citations: A Method Guide
What should you look for first?
Gallantry awards are published in The Gazette, the official public record, which gives the fact of the award, the person and the date. Start from the Gazette entry, then look for the citation and the service record behind it.
Keep the question narrow. A search for everything about a person returns nothing usable, while a search for one dated fact returns something testable. Start from the person, not from the record type, and fix name, number, unit and dates as firmly as you can before you open anything.
The order to work in
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. Do not start with the record that interests you most. Start with the record that anchors the timeline, and let interest follow the anchor. A session that ends with a tidy list of references and open questions is a successful session, even if it ends with no new story.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Find the published notice first, and note the award, rank, unit and date exactly as published. |
| 2 | Look for the citation, where one was published, and read it as an official account of one act, not as a biography. |
| 3 | Check name, rank and unit against the personal file before adding the award to the timeline. |
| 4 | Use the citation to frame questions for unit records, not as a substitute for them. |
How to read this kind of entry
A summary written later is a different kind of evidence from a record written at the time, and the two should never be quoted as if they were one document. Watch for the clerk hand as well as the officer hand. Different hands in one file mean different dates of writing, and later hands can introduce later errors. Do not read a unit diary as if it were written for you. It was written for the unit, in unit shorthand, and personal details appear only where the unit needed them.
What are the common dead ends?
A photograph with no caption, a medal with no roll entry, and a story with no dates are all the same problem: a clue without a filter. Change one filter at a time, spelling, initials, number, unit or date range, and keep a note of which combinations you have already tried.
If a family paper and an official record cannot both be right, keep both, date both, and look for a third record. A third record breaks ties that argument cannot. If a published list and an original record disagree on a name, prefer the original, and note the list variant as a search term for future searches.
Where to go next from here
Let the dates decide the direction. The next record should cover the dates the timeline is weakest on, not the dates it already covers well. Check whether the next step is already answered in your notes. Reopening a record you have already mined wastes the session that could have advanced it.
Where the next step involves a different holder, take the reference with you. A holder approached without a reference can only offer general guidance. 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
This guide keeps its claims general and points to the official holders, so the holder itself is the place to check the current position. It is general educational information only, not personal professional advice, and it offers no record lookup service and no determination of any individual's service.