How to Find Family Members Who Fought in Ww2

Researching a family unit's military history used to be tricky, merely as paper archives go digital, information technology's now possible for anyone to leafage out their family tree in surprising detail.

Soldier Emile Turcot hugs his mother, while surrounded by his sisters, on the day he returned to Canada subsequently the 2nd World War, on October. 28, 1945. (Courtesy Historica-Dominion Constitute)

Researching a family unit'south military machine history used to be a real challenge, but as more and more than paper archives get digital and are transferred to the internet, it'south condign possible for anyone to foliage out a family tree in surprising detail by using a few tricks and knowing where to look.

"The biggest thing that's changed is the ability to discover digitized documents through simple things like Google and search tools specific to armed services family histories," says Alex Herd, atomic number 82 researcher for the Historica-Dominion Institute Memory Project in Toronto that aims to increase the public'south knowledge of Canadian history.

"There almost seems to exist some prestige involved with finding an antecedent who served in the military and particularly in any wars, and a lot of information that was difficult to get before has get available," adds Jeannine Powell of Duncan, B.C. Her twenty-four hours job is with a secretarial company, only an "18-year obsession" with genealogy has made her an expert (her nickname is GenQueen, a play on her name), and she's involved with groups ranging from Genealogy Helplist Canada, to the Church building of Jesus Christ of Latter Twenty-four hour period Saints' Family History Centre, to an array of historical websites.

"Two of the highest things people utilise the internet [to search] for are pornography and family ancestry. One volition tear a family apart, the other will build it up," she says with a laugh.

What'south out there

Jeannette Holm looks for more ambulances to option up incoming wounded soldiers in the early months of 1945 at Imperial Air Force Station Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, England. This photo appeared in Harper's Bazaar magazine, May 1945. (Courtesy Historica-Dominion Institute)

There's a growing collection of personal armed forces minutiae available through paid websites that cater to people researching their family trees.

One of the biggest subscription sites is Ancestry.com, which has been adding databases and buying up other genealogy portals such as Footnote.com (which it renamed Fold3.com and gave an even stronger military focus). The monthly accuse for Beginnings.ca, its Canadian portal, starts at $10 and the archival collections for Canada and other countries include burial and state of war grave registers, records of war dead, copies of testament papers, and lists of deserters, dischargees and POWs.

"Ancestry.ca is the get-go and No. 1 thing that a lot of people take been using for this kind of research," says Herd.

Paid sites generally accept extensive records that are slickly organized and easy to use.

"Ancestry.ca does much of the searching for you and volition automatically utilize what yous enter in your tree to search the billions of historical records in its database for likely matches," says Ancestry.ca genealogist Lesley Anderson.

"We accept a number of [types of] military content available to users at ancestry.ca/retrieve," she said, adding that the online records are available to the public for free until November. thirteen in honour of Remembrance Day.

Besides their centralized search capabilities, subscription-based sites besides offer admission to some material that isn't readily bachelor elsewhere.

"In terms of Globe War II, for example, it'due south but recently that more records take started to get available, and many of those are on the large commercial websites," Powell says.

But paid sites aren't the only inquiry option, and they only contain a portion of the data that's available. There's an enormous amount of information published free through regime and educational sites, and shared by genealogy hobbyists.

Library and Archives Canada and other government and educational agencies are steadily digitizing their free paper records, Herd says, and they date back to conflicts such equally the State of war of 1812 and the rebellions of 1837 and 1885. "In the last few years they've become an of import link for family members interested in finding veterans in their broader family tree."

Where to start

Reverse to what many beginners recollect, documents related to recent conflicts tend to be scarcer than those from older ones, and it'due south due to confidentiality laws governed by statutes of limitation. Simply there are all-encompassing public records online virtually soldiers in the Commencement Earth War and previous wars, and more and more armed forces records from the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam are being released as time passes. The documents range from service records and images to papers containing interesting personal and service-related information.

In fact, there'southward and then much information available today that beginners tin feel lost, says Maj. Michael Boire, assistant professor of war machine history and native studies at the Regal Armed forces College of Canada in Kingston, Ont.

But with the right approach, finding basic information about English language and French Canadian soldiers, sailors, support workers and even war brides is very manageable fifty-fifty for novices.

Jeannine Powell's five-step procedure for beginners

1. Start with what you know, such as a name or war machine unit.
2. There's a lot of information out there and information technology's easy to become lost in it. Having a specific target for your research — such every bit finding a service record or list of medals earned — can keep a search focused.
3. Look at what's available online and go a feel for the types of records available for that menses to see if the blazon of record you're after is likely to have existed.
4. If you tin't find something online, identify and cheque other types of resource such as hard re-create documentation, books, microfilm and paper reports that might have leads.
5. Fifty-fifty if you seem to have drawn a blank, advisedly analyze the data you've collected. It ofttimes contains clues pointing to a new bending for your search.

You've got to ask the right questions at the beginning, Boire says, and that volition help build up a moving picture of the person that volition commencement to come live every bit y'all get together more data. "The most important office of looking for dad's, granddad's or corking-gramps'southward records is to discover the details about the unit he joined and where he served, and piece of work outwards from there. Without knowing who slap-up-granddaddy was, actually, you can come up to empathize where he fought and build a fairly accurate idea of what his life was similar in the trenches."

"Every military unit keeps records," Herd adds. "When y'all're looking for information on things similar the regiments and battalions that fought on D-Mean solar day, for instance, all these units had list and rolls of who served in them. So if you can institute when and where a family member fought, that should be a great starting indicate for getting detailed documentation on them."

Canada'due south National Archives site has the names and personnel files of all Canadian soldiers from both world wars, plus information from the attestation paper WWI soldiers signed when they volunteered for the army.

"What yous get in this personnel record is this little spark that detonates a chain that takes you through where and when, and you lot add on to that," Boire says. "There's all kinds of information in a personnel file, especially medical stuff such as what hospitals they went to if they were hurt or ill, and so on."

Some of Boire's research tricks include:

• If yous know or suspect a soldier was injured, check the hospital records available through Canada'south National Archives.
• Detect the soldier's hometown, and read the local newspapers from that time period — many of which are now in online archives such as the B.C. Historical Newspapers collection. A lot of small-scale-town papers published announcements nearly a death or injury, who was overseas, and fifty-fifty notes from people writing in and saying things like, "I heard from John Smith, he was at Normandy and he'south OK."
• If the soldier fought in a unit that's notwithstanding around in the militia, go to the militia armouries and look at their records. Many have detailed archives and scrapbooks with every single paper and clipping about the unit and its members.
• Query Veteran's Diplomacy if you call up a relative had a armed services alimony.
• Check the Salvation Regular army and Knights of Columbus athenaeum, since they deployed people overseas and kept records of who they worked with.
• Visit the local library and read the books of regimental histories, such as The Official History of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and Over The Height, and look for the soldier's name. You may not find it, but you'll learn well-nigh all the places they fought and what kind of life they had.
• Don't trust annal indexes because they're ofttimes incomplete. Work backwards through athenaeum, because there were large backlogs of information in wartime that were ofttimes not added to the records until long after an event.

The Great State of war Forum tin can exist a handy source of communication if you striking a dead end on your search, Anderson says.

Online best-bets

There are many types of military athenaeum online, and pulling information from them can exist every bit simple as doing a Google search with terms such as "Canadian military history," Herd says.

"You'll pull upward things like the Canadian Military History Gateway, or the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies, and those kinds of sites volition give you a lot of very general and wide information that volition lead y'all in new directions."

The British Republic War Graves Committee is another good site, he adds. "They've done a fantastic chore maintaining records of Commonwealth war graves overseas."

Canadian soliders on go out in Paris, 1945. (Courtesy Historica-Dominion Constitute)

Merely Herd cautions that not all archives are created equal, and the quality of the information and thoroughness of the records can vary.

"People should rely on established regime and teaching websites where they can. For the less formal ones, don't disregard them merely use a discretionary eye."

Still, Boire says it'south amazing how much information even indirect sources tin can offer.

"You're doing all sorts of CSI-style investigation, y'all're picking up little snippets about great-granddad from all over the place that were created in no existent logical order and putting them together in this blended cartoon of him. The snippets are out there, simply y'all have to be clever."

Some of Powell, Anderson and Herd's favourite websites for researching a family unit's military history are:

• Library and Archives Canada: A good jumping-in bespeak, information technology has a large and growing drove of wartime records. For example, its alphabetize of Canadians involved in the First Globe War ofttimes includes a soldier'southward signature, next of kin, a physical description and in some cases a photo.
• Canadian Virtual State of war Memorial: An all-encompassing database of the location of armed services graves, and an pick to lodge a copy of a specific soldier'due south entry in the Book of Remembrance.
• Democracy War Graves Commission: Personal and service details and places of commemoration for the 1.7 million members of the Democracy forces who died in the First or Second World Wars.
• FindAGrave.com: Not limited to the military, information technology can help locate the gravesites of specific people and has photos of cemeteries and graves.
• Canadian Post War War machine and Dependant Graves: Burial locations of service members and their dependants who died outside of Canada and the United states of america but were not returned to Canada.
• Cyndi'southward Listing: This site gathers lists of links to useful genealogy research sites. There'southward an extensive listing of military sites, databases and assist forums.
• FamilySearch.org: A jump-off point to multiple databases and resource. For guides to finding military data, follow the "Learn" link at the top of the page, click on "Research Courses," and cull "War machine" from the left-hand column.
• Canadian Merchant Navy War Dead Registry: And alphabetize of merchant sailors and their ships.
• WorldVitalRecords.com: A drove of everything from personal data to tombstone photos.
• AutomatedGenealogy.com: Links to demography information and wartime databases.
• Genealogylinks.cyberspace: A collection of links to smaller Canadian military archive sites.
• FindMyPast.co.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland: This Uk-centric site includes military records pertaining to other countries.
• Odessa3.org: A genealogical library drawing on sources of information nearly people of German and Russian descent.

Powell adds that one of the latest sources of new information on the web is digitized books, through sites such every bit internetarchive.org and books.google.ca.

"They're now putting so much information and books online, and as time goes on there'll be more resources bachelor. Things are only getting better."

Portals for gratuitous

Corinne Kernan Sévigny was 19 when she enlisted in the Canadian Women'due south Army Corps, the CWAC, during the 2nd World War. (Courtesy Historica-Dominion Constitute)

In that location are also means to access the paid portals for gratis. Many libraries in the U.Southward. and Canada take subscriptions to paid services that can be used by visitors to their branches, for example.

And the Family unit History Centres beyond Northward America operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Solar day Saints are open to the public and offer gratis admission to many paid-subscription databases. The centres are too tied into the all-encompassing genealogy databases in Table salt Lake City, Utah, and are staffed by volunteers and family history consultants who can help with tricky searches.

"Those options are an untapped resources because many people just aren't aware of them," Powell says.

Taking the search offline

While more and more armed forces records are being digitized and put online, a scrap of existent-earth legwork is oft still necessary to fill out gaps in a soldier'southward profile.

"There are more than and more indexes and digitized records coming online every month, yet many of these collections point to a war machine service tape and for that you will need to visit or contact the archives to view the file," says Ancestry.ca's Anderson.

"As a historian myself I like to go wait at paper documents, and my greatest ally is the archivist," Herd says. "Whether you're looking at paper or electronic resource, put in your requests and see what you tin find."

Paul and Joan Dumaine on their hymeneals day in England on July iv, 1945. (Courtesy Historica-Rule Institute)

For those who can make the trip to Ottawa, it's free to await at any National Archives documents that haven't withal been digitized and snap a photo.

If something isn't online and yous tin can't go to where the hard-re-create documents are stored, wait for historical societies in the area, contact the archive's administrators, or try groups such equally the Canada Genealogy Forum and Genealogy Helplist Canada, Powell says. Sometimes local volunteers dedicated to genealogical pursuits will look up a fact or document if you'll cover basic expenses like parking and photocopying fees.

Above all, the experts all say it'due south important to remember the hunt can accept time, particularly if you're building a detailed genealogical profile of a family unit member's military history.

"There's a lot of information out in that location, and anything to do with family genealogy and official documentation is probably going to require a fairly large search," says Herd. "So be patient and enquire equally many questions as you can of people who have taken the time to set up these websites and archives."

"Information technology's a labour of love. Don't give yourself any kind of borderline and when all kinds of leads come up up at cipher only realize that it'due south all function of it," adds Boire. "A hobby is the best style to look at information technology, do an hour or two here and in that location and keep gathering —  never assume the search is over, and information technology'due south amazing what you'll find."

Successfully finding an elusive piece of data can be a real triumph, Powell adds, remembering the twenty-four hours she finally constitute details nearly her husband'southward third-great-grandfather.

"I'd been looking for him for x years and when I finally found him in an obscure listing in a volume, I was just so excited. Everybody in Duncan heard it, considering I was jumping upward and down and doing the genealogy happy trip the light fantastic."

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Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-to-uncover-your-family-s-military-roots-1.1111067

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