Filed under Gallantry Awards and Citations: A Method Guide
Where should you start looking?
Mentioned in Despatches means a person's name was brought to notice in an official despatch for distinguished or gallant service. It is recorded in the Gazette and may be marked on the service record, but it is not itself a medal.
Records disagree more often than stories do, and that is useful: a disagreement points to a transfer, a renumbering, or a variant spelling, each of which can be tested. 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. Where the service is unknown, do not guess it from a photograph or a badge. Test each service in turn, starting with the one the dates and the place suggest.
Working through it in order
The sequence below is a default, not a law. If a step produces a surprise, follow the surprise, and return to the sequence afterwards. Keep your notes in the same order as the steps, so that a later reader, including yourself in six months, can retrace the work. As you work, note the reference of every record you open, and keep a separate note of anything you expected to find but did not.
- Find the published notice first, and note the award, rank, unit and date exactly as published.
- Look for the citation, where one was published, and read it as an official account of one act, not as a biography.
- Check name, rank and unit against the personal file before adding the award to the timeline.
- Use the citation to frame questions for unit records, not as a substitute for them.
How to read this kind of entry
A place name followed by a question mark, a correction, or a second spelling is the record telling you it is unsure. Carry that uncertainty into your notes. 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. Ranks, trades and roles should be read with their dates, because acting rank, temporary postings and reorganisations all leave traces that look like contradictions.
Common traps in this record type
Do not mistake a digitised index for the whole record set. An index that covers part of a series will hide entries that the full catalogue would show. The dead end that matters most is the one you do not notice: a near match quietly adopted, a date quietly rounded, a spelling quietly modernised.
- A citation never published in full.
- An award gazetted under a variant spelling.
- A posthumous award recorded after the personal file ends.
- A family story that upgrades a campaign medal into a gallantry award.
The next record in the chain
Move between record types deliberately, and note the move. A timeline that jumps record types without noting the jumps cannot be audited. Where this record and another disagree, the next record should be one that can explain the disagreement, not one that repeats one side of it.
If a related guide looks irrelevant, read its first paragraph before dismissing it. Irrelevance is often a misjudged title, not a misplaced guide. Stop when the next step is named and the references are written. That is a complete session, however short the timeline looks.
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.