How Do I Test a Family Medal Story?

What should you look for first?

Test a medal story by finding the roll entry for the person, then checking the qualifying dates against the service record postings. If the postings do not cover the qualifying period, the story needs re-examination, however firmly it is remembered.

Write down what you know, what you suspect, and what you do not know, in three separate lists, and keep them apart until a record joins them. One dated fact from a record outweighs three plausible details from a story, and the timeline should show which is which.

Reading what the record actually says

If you cannot read a word, mark it unread rather than guessing it. A guessed word, once written into a timeline, is very hard to dislodge. The order of sheets in a file is not always the order of events. Rebuild the date order yourself, and do not trust filing order to do it for you. 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

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 the trail ends at a particular holder, the next step is to ask that holder where the record went, not to search the same catalogue harder.

Each dead end here is a normal research outcome, not a personal failure, and each one points to a next check rather than to a conclusion. A unit, ship or camp that cannot be fixed from the clues available is a reason to gather one more clue, not a reason to guess the most likely candidate.

The order to work in

If you are unsure which step comes first, choose the step that fixes a date. Dates order everything else, and an unfixed date disorders everything else. Let dates set the sequence. When the order is unclear, sort by date and work forward, because records explain the entries that follow them, not the ones that precede them.

1. Find the roll entry first, and note its reference, the medal, and any clasps shown.
2. Check name, number, rank and unit on the roll against the personal file.
3. Use the index card, where one survives, as a finding aid to the roll, not as a replacement for it.
4. Test any family medal story against the roll before adding it to the timeline.

What to open after this one

Check the holder current guidance before any next step that involves a request, a copy, or a visit. Guidance changes, and a step planned on old guidance wastes a session. Let the question this record raised choose the next record. A record opened out of curiosity, rather than out of a question, rarely advances a timeline. When two records disagree, note both and look for a third that explains the difference.