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Remembered Today:

Army Orders - Where are they?


jdevereux

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Hi All,

I have searched high and low for any information regarding where i can find at least a list of Army orders . See them cropping up all over yet am rarely ever able to find what they are. Forums like may often refer to one and someone seems to know what it is but how!

Is there a main repository (assuming THA) or does anyone have a list up their sleeve?

Many thanks!

Winordie

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They are in class WO123 at Kew. Not available online, so a personal visit may be necessary, or other Pals may have copies of specific orders.

WO 123/51 Army orders (War Office) 1909
WO 123/52 Army orders (War Office) 1910
WO 123/53 Army orders (War Office) 1911
WO 123/54 Army orders (War Office) 1912
WO 123/55 Army orders (War Office) 1913
WO 123/56 Army orders (War Office) 1914
WO 123/57 Army orders (War Office) 1915
WO 123/58 Army orders (War Office) 1916
WO 123/59 Army orders (War Office) 1917
WO 123/60 Army orders (War Office) 1918
WO 123/61 Army orders (War Office) 1919
WO 123/62 Army orders (War Office) 1920
Army Orders are numbered from 1 on 1 January each year, so both the number and the year are needed.
Ron
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Well, fairly full set! I think there are some missing.

Ron

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TNA, are you listening?

Ron

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I copied both AO & ACI years ago for some research I was doing. They are invaluable

Digitise them and charge a fee!. I'd pay a reasonable fee for access.

Craig

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I copied both AO & ACI years ago for some research I was doing. They are invaluable

Could you publish a little booklet of same. You would no problem selling them.

Mike

Edit Craig read my mind.

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Booklet!!!!!

More like a tome or indeed tomes.

I suspect it would be very weighty but out of curiosity how many volumes do the war year AO's amount to?

Craig

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The AOs at Cambridge (and TNA i think) are bound annually with annual index. About normal book size and density.

ACIs about 4 times more material from memory.

I have cherry picked both series but cherry picking does not allow for later interests queries and cross refs.

AVOID

The AOs at Cambridge (and TNA i think) are bound annually with annual index. About normal book size and density.

ACIs about 4 times more material from memory.

I have cherry picked both series but cherry picking does not allow for later interests queries and cross refs.

AVOID

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The AOs and ACIs at TNA are generally bound into very heavy and unwieldy tomes. From memory I think they were bound into one volume per year, which is why they are so large (read: over 1,000 pages, roughly A5 or the imperial equivalent). Many are heavily annotated in handwriting with subsequent amendments

I used them to research the history of battle honours and separately the renumbering of the Yeomanry in 1917. I have a photo of the 1917 ACI book which is similar in dimensions to an Army List and covers ACIs 1 to 1,032. AO books were even thicker if memory serves and more heavily annotated.

MG

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Does anyone have an image of a page, just for us who have never seen these sacred volumes, living nearly 400 miles awa' as the craw flies.

Mike

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I believe your nearest "copyright" library should have AOs as a matter of the then law requiring all publications to lodge a copy of each at

London British

cambridge

Oxford

cardiff

edinburgh

dublin

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Does anyone have an image of a page, just for us who have never seen these sacred volumes, living nearly 400 miles awa' as the craw flies.

I don't know whether the following helps, but it was "Issued with A.C.I. 500 of 10th December 1927" . it appears to be a transcription, I have been told it is most likely an OCR version of the original page.

http://www.warestablishments.net/Great%20Britain/Reconnaissance/Armoured%20Car%20Company%201927.pdf

(warestablishments.net: An Armoured Car Company, R.T.C. [Royal Tank Corps] War Establishment)

War Office: Army Council: Instructions. 1914-1964: WO 293 at the National Archives

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/r/C14497

Cheers

Maureen

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Small point Grumpy. The national library is Aberystwyth not Cardiff for Wales.

And while the BL usually gets everything, the rest merely have the right to request a copy of any book published in the UK

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Not strictly true.

The "request" is done by a central agency

Title escapes me but all of my self published books (6 titles) have been nobbled with a legally enforcible polite demand.

The agency then distributes to the six.

Way to avoid this is not to have an ISBN and to keep a low profile but one then foregoes the ego trip "my books can be read at Cambridge you know "

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It's called the "Agency for the Copyright Libraries" and functions from an address in Euston Road which I think is probably the same as the British Library.

Incidentally I have found a few books published in the UK which are not in the Cambridge UL. When I asked about this, I was told that the system only became fully effective after 1945.

Ron

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Grumpy,

May previously have been the case, but now requests for BL are dealt with out of Boston Spa, whilst the others are actually managed out of National Library of Scotland http://www.legaldeposit.org.uk/

See also http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/introduction/

By law, a copy of every UK print publication must be given to the British Library by its publishers, and to five other major libraries that request it. This system is called legal deposit and has been a part of English law since 1662.
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So I take that I am essentially correct except that the BL is a separate case and the others are represented by one agency.

Thread drift of course.

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