| Researching Early Officers And Soldiers back to 'Family History'
It is often difficult for us to find information about early officers in Britain, because the career records have not generally survived. They were among the items lost when IHQ and NHQ in London were destroyed in 1941 during the Blitz. Where officers from Britain later served in Canada or the USA, the Archives in North America will usually have more information than we do, so that is generally the best place to start.
Records of early day soldiers in Britain are almost non-existent, because hardly any corps have Soldiers' Rolls going back as far as 1900. For information about cadets in training and officers' appointments before 1914, we are almost entirely dependent on information that was published in Army periodicals, mainly 'The War Cry', 'The Officer' and 'The Deliverer'. These periodicals are seldom indexed, so it can take a long time to find even one reference to an officer or cadet, and sometimes it is impossible.
We are able to do what we can to help, as far as our resources allow.
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