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ww1 records

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Kenneth

Kenneth Report 17 Nov 2015 06:58

I have not been able to find any Ww1 records of my Father Pte John Wragg 128889 in the Machine gun Corp. .He never spoke of his time in the war or where he was sent. Have been told all these records were destroyed in the London ww2 blitz. Can anyone help with my search.

MarieCeleste

MarieCeleste Report 17 Nov 2015 09:42

Hello Kenneth, what you've been told is correct, around 65 - 70% of WW1 service records were destroyed during WW2 and it would seem your father's were amongst them.

His medal index card is on Ancestry (can send if you don't already have it).

There are battalion diaries which show where units where but it can be tricky with the MGC as they were often attached to several different regiments.

This link tells you a bit about their formation:

http://goo.gl/EP2dKH

DazedConfused

DazedConfused Report 17 Nov 2015 16:11

There was a lady on tv from the National Arvhives about 1 year ago.

In fact the number of missing record is around 75 -80%.

Researching:
We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars, Oscar Wilde New avatar, my dad age about 3/4 months, could have been worse, it could have been the awful nude on a rug!!

MarieCeleste

MarieCeleste Report 17 Nov 2015 18:07

From National Archives own website:

"Only around a third of service records for non-officer ranks survive following the bombing of the War Office record repository in the Second World War."

A proportion of the 33.33% that survived aren't complete (the "burnt" records) so what the woman from National Archives should have made clear is that 20 to 25% are complete and the remainder are partial - however those partial records can still yield a fair bit of information.