Searching effectively at Kew. HELP!

[IanA]

I am trying to locate records pertaining to three officers and, as I live a few hundred miles away from Kew, I have some help from a lady who is a very experienced researcher there but more at home with mediaeval Latin documents than great war diaries. The lady seems to be floundering -

".... it's in a sub-folder titled AIR 1-173-15-171. I can certainly look into the other AIR record set from next week, but it's internally unindexed, and in my experience each TNA box contains hundreds of documents, so it may take a couple of Tuesdays to locate the right pages.

For the to WO sets, in their current state (from memory) one master citation contains over 5000 documents and the other over 5000 boxes, and surnames aren't indexed in the Discovery catalogue -- given there's no end to my ignorance of military research, it would be a great help if you could try to see if there's a way to find a more targeted citation, even if it doesn't go to piece level -- just bringing it down to 4 or 5 boxes would be a huge help. I think the 3 AIR 1/1223/204/5/2634 boxes which dates to July, August and September 1917 will keep me going for the next couple of Tuesdays, so there would be no need to rush over that."

I certainly don't want her ploughing through 5000 documents!! I wonder whether any pal could point her/ me in the right direction? Needless to say, any help would be vastly appreciated.

The officers are Lt William Somerville McLaren RFC who was killed in November, 1917. He had only been with the 48th squadron for three months so I'm want to see accident and combat reports for those three months as well as his service record. His brother was Captain James McLaren, 7th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and was killed three days later on 21st November, 1917. I have the chunk of war diary relating to the fighting at that time so only require his service record. The third officer is Lt William Ewart, 13th Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, killed 30th March, 1918. I would like his service record and the war diary for February/ March 1918.

Will she really have to wade through unindexed boxes to find what I want or is there a better approach that she could try?

Thanks in advance,

Ian

[PPCLI]

Hi Ian,

William Somerville McLaren is relatively straight forward: WO 339/99103 and AIR 76/324/95 are his respective army and RFC files.

The other two are a little more difficult. Since they both served with TF battalions, their records are more likely to be in the WO 374 set, but these can't always be pinned down to an exact reference if a relatively common name. A NA search returns:

McLaren, Capt J - WO 374/44894

Ewart, Lieut W G - WO 374/23311

There are other J McLarens but they have a middle initial. Let me know if this is the case.

Stuart

[seaforths]

Not at all Ian

They are now indexed better and you should be able to find the references for her and speed up the process.

Search the Discovery catalogue on-line http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/

Type in WO 374 J McLaren and you should be able to scroll through and identify your man. I am not sure how the AIR records work for officers. You might also find Ewart in the same way as McLaren.

Good Luck

[spof]

Seaforths

For the flying officers, this is a good place to start http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/raf-officers-ww1.htm

While Discovery is rubbish, the TNA guides are excellent for all sorts of topics http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records%5Cdefault.htm

[PPCLI]

Ian,

Having had a further look at the officers MICs etc, I am fairly confident that the references given in my first reply will be the ones you are after. For Lt Ewart's death, the war diary is 13 Battalion Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) 01 October 1916 - 30 June 1918: WO 95/4892.

Stuart

[seaforths]

Seaforths

For the flying officers, this is a good place to start http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/raf-officers-ww1.htm

While Discovery is rubbish, the TNA guides are excellent for all sorts of topics http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records\default.htm

Thanks Glen,

I am just about starting to get to grips with searching Discovery. My rationale being that it will probably be the only thing we end up with so I might as well get used to it. The TNA guides are very useful and I have only searched the records for one RFC man who was not an officer and I had no problem finding his record. I have never had reason (yet) to search for an RFC/RAF officer. I think the Discovery Catalogue has good/bad points and no-one likes change, especially when they had a working system that people were used to using. From my own experience, I found the old system cumbersome and difficult to begin with and it did take a while to be able to find your way around. However, once I had used it for a while, I became comfortable using it and like others, found the change annoying.

[IanA]

Ooooooh! What lovely people you all are! Having been on the forum for longer than I care to remember, I knew that but it's nice be on the receiving end of such generosity.

PPCLI - your refs look very good. James McLaren doesn't have a middle name and Lt Ewart is William Grieve Ewart!

I shall explore the on-line search engines mentioned and pass on all info to my researcher.

Many thanks,

Ian

[David_Underdown]

The AIR files are digitised, so probably may as well just download it yourself, you will just pay the fee of £3.36, rather than whatever the hourly rate the reseracher would be charging you. The officers' files are all individual files, rather than being given several files in the same box. For officers' records it's often worth looking at the index in WO 338, it's broken down into several pieces in alphabetical chunks. All can be downloaded free of charge, but they are big files. This helps to identify the correct file if they have yet been recatalogued

Look for the names you are interested in in the appropriate section of the index, it will list surname, forenames (or occasionally just initials), unit (this can be a little difficult to decipher as for infantry regiments it only lists the number representing the regimental seniority - I've found it easiest to search Wikipedia for eg 41st Foot, and it will tell you what name the regiment was given in 1881!). Finally there will be a reference number. If it's purely numeric (aka a Long Number) the related file (if it survives) will be in WO 339 and the reference from WO 338 will be in the former reference in Discovery, you can use advanced search to look for that explicitly. If the reference has prefix of 2 alphabetical characters the file would be in WO 374, the numeric part of the reference will again be in the former reference field. If the reference is prefixed just P/, you are out of luck, the man served post 1922 nad his file will still be held by MOD. The War Office did shuffle the files around a bit during the war, so sometimes you find that there was originally a Long Number, but then that's been crossed out and one or more of the other styles written in. Obviously you want the last one that's not crossed out.

It's worth bearing in mind that these files are not strictly the officer's service record, but really a supplementary file of correspondence. The main record was also destroyed in the infamous bombing raid in WWII, not everyone had one of these files, and some had been "weeded" before the destruction of the other files. The contents can be quite variable.

[IanA]

Thanks, David. I had downloaded WS McLaren's service record AIR 76/ 324/95 myself already but Kristina will be able to access lots of stuff much more cheaply. (She is a friend of my wife and not charging for her time which is why I want to make it as quick and painless as possible for her).

Ian

[IanA]

Ian,

Having had a further look at the officers MICs etc, I am fairly confident that the references given in my first reply will be the ones you are after. For Lt Ewart's death, the war diary is 13 Battalion Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) 01 October 1916 - 30 June 1918: WO 95/4892.

Stuart

Stuart - 13th Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. Or do you know something I don't?

[IanA]

Just looked and I see that the 13th Black Watch was formed of several lots of dismounted yeomanry. As our William is commemorated on the Arras memorial (30/3/18), he must have been transferred before the rest of the battalion returned from Salonika. His service record may give some clues.

[PPCLI]

Hi Ian,

I wasn't completely sure which battalion you meant because the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry unit of the Black Watch was the 14th Bn. However, as you say, still not relevant to Lt Ewart because they didn't arrive in France until May and June 1918.

The following details were published in the London Gazette:

LG Issue 30327

War Office, 9th October, 1917.

TERRITORIAL FORCE.

YEOMANRY.

2nd Lt. W. G. Ewart is seconded for duty with the Lewis Gun School. 6th July 1917.

LG Issue 30352

War Office, 26th October, 1917.

TERRITORIAL FORCE.

YEOMANRY.

The undermentioned 2nd Lts. to be Lts.:—

W. G. Ewart. 12th July 1917, and to remain seconded.

So, at some point he went from the Lewis Gun School to an unknown battalion on the Western Front. This is the type of scenario where, if done properly, the NA war diary tagging project will be of huge benefit. For the moment, until the TF division war diaries are digitised, you will have to hope that his service file is one of the more useful examples of its type and gives some service details rather than letters to and fro between his estate and the War Office over who owes how much money and to whom!

Cheers,

Stuart

[IanA]

Thanks again, Stuart. I am particularly impressed with the LG entries. I haven't used that for years as I found the search function infuriating!

[IanA]

The result - McLaren and Ewart both found. The records were not as extensive as I'd hoped for but a fair amount can be deduced and I'm well pleased. It seems that Ewart and the rest of the staff at the Lewis Gun School were gathered up into what was known as 'Carey's Force' and flung in to resist the Kaiserschlacht. Many thanks to all who contributed to this thread and a big cheer for Stuart for providing those valuable references.

[PPCLI]

Hi Ian,

Pleased to be of help. As I mentioned above, officers' files are very variable and can be very disappointing, particularly those who died in service, so even more pleased that the files contained enough information for you to add to their service details.

Stuart