Where can I find armed services records?
Local and family history A-Z > Armed services records
Online records and guides
The Ministry of Defence has a website
Veterans UK which acts as the
single point of contact within the ministry for veterans and their
dependants who are seeking help, information and advice. The site includes
information about medals and service records and also includes links to
many veterans' organisations- You can search numerous types of records at National Archives Discovery
- There are web sites giving details of war memorials, rolls of honour, war graves and more in Armed services on Weblinks
- For more information, see the detailed online research guides at National Archives Research Guides. For the First World War there are more concise guides at Service records for the First World War
Online records on Ancestry web site
- There are several databases of military records on the Ancestry web site
- The Ancestry web site is available by subscription at
Ancestry.co.uk or you can search Ancestry Library Edition free at
any Bedfordshire library.
Ancestry are offering library members access to the Library Edition from home until the end of August 2020.
Click here to log in with your library card number and PIN. - To find the military records on Ancestry Library Edition, click 'Begin Searching' on the Ancestry Library Edition home page
- At the resulting Search page, scroll down the section on the right hand side headed 'Historical Records' and click on 'military'
- On the Military page, click on the 'card catalogue' for a full list of the collections which can then be filtered further eg. by location, date etc.
- The databases of military records on Ancestry Library Edition include, among others:
- British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920
- British Army WWI Pension Records, 1914-1920
- British Army WWI Service Records, 1914-1920
- England, The National Roll of the Great War, 1914-1918
- UK Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919
- British Commonwealth War Graves Registers, 1914-1918
Bedfordshire records and printed guides
- For a selection of titles at Bedford Central, Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard libraries, see 'Armed services' on the each library's page at Local and family history by library
- Find more titles by searching the online catalogue for keyword pairs such as regiment Bedfordshire; yeomanry Bedfordshire; military Bedfordshire; militia Bedfordshire
- For family history guides to armed services, at the online catalogue search using keywords such as 'armed service records' and 'family history army'
- See Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment top tips
Page last updated: 17th June 2020