How Do I Identify the Right Regiment?

First checks before you go further

Identify the regiment from the service record, a medal roll entry, or a casualty record, not from a cap badge in a photograph alone. Badges were worn, borrowed and misremembered, while a record entry is dated.

Do not let the first record you find set the shape of the research. The first record is a starting point, and starting points are often unrepresentative. Write the match standard for this person before you search, and hold every candidate to it. A standard written after the search will always fit the result.

A step by step way through

Work forward through time, not backwards, unless a later record is the only one that names the earlier period. Forward is the direction records explain. Work one question at a time, and resist the urge to answer three questions from one record. A record that answers one question well beats a record stretched across three.

• Take the regiment or corps and the battalion from the personal file, with dates.
• Check whether the unit was amalgamated, renumbered or converted, and over which dates.
• Open the unit records for the posting dates only, and note their references.
• Use regimental museums and published histories only after the unit record for those dates has been read.

Reading what the record actually says

If an entry puzzles you, date it first and interpret it second. Most misreadings here come from carrying a later meaning backwards. A summary page at the front of a file is a later compilation, and compilations introduce errors. Use it as a map, and verify its claims sheet by sheet. Period handwriting, period place names and period unit structures all reward a slow reading. Speed is what turns a plausible reading into a wrong one.

Common traps in this record type

A photograph, a medal, or a story that points to a unit the records do not support is a prompt for one more check, not evidence that the records are wrong. 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.

• A regiment amalgamated or renumbered.
• A territorial unit with a tangled numbering history.
• A corps record filed differently from a regimental record.
• A home service posting that left little unit paper.

What to open after this one

The next record in the chain is usually the one for the same dates in a different record set, not the next date in the same record set. If a related guide looks irrelevant, read its first paragraph before dismissing it. Irrelevance is often a misjudged title, not a misplaced guide. If this guide leaves you with one sharp question, it has done its work. Take that question, and its reference, into the next record.