Where are these service files?

[Skipman]

Edmund Blunden I know there's a lot available on Blunden on line Click but where is his service file. Does anyone have the WO Ref?

Also can't find WO refs for

Maurice Harold Macmillan

Robert Anthony Eden

Bernard Law Montgomery

Mike

[Keith_history_buff]

It would be fair to say that Mr B L Montgomery's service did not stop on or before April 1922. Therefore, his file will still be with the MOD, and will not have been transferred to The National Archives.

 

Quote

[MOD retained] Service records date from:

1750 for Foot Guards (not including Scots Guards)
1920 for the RAF
January 1921 for British Army soldiers if their service ended after January 1921
April 1922 for British Army officers if their service ended after April 1922
1926 for Royal Navy including Royal Marines

 

[Skipman]

1 minute ago, Keith_history_buff said:

It would be fair to say that Mr B L Montgomery's service did not stop on or before April 1922. Therefore, his file will still be with the MOD, and will not have been transferred to The National Archives.

 

Fair enough re Montgomery.

Mike

1 minute ago, Keith_history_buff said:

 

 

[Keith_history_buff]

In addition, the Arnside Street fire damaged a quantity of British Army Officers' records, in addition to OR files in the WO 363 series, often referred to as the "burnt records". Those officer records at Kew - WO 339, WO 374 - are a mixture of documents that survived the fire, and reconstituted files with information sourced from accounting and medical files.
 

 

[Keith_history_buff]

There's a very interesting post on the other thread from Terry Reeves, which is well worth reading.

[Skipman]

6 minutes ago, Keith_history_buff said:

There's a very interesting post on the other thread from Terry Reeves, which is well worth reading.

This one. Mike

"Officers files were never intended to be records of service. They were referred to as "personal files" and that nomenclature is used by the TNA. From my own work on these files, it is clear that they refer mainly to financial, and sometimes disciplinary matters.  Records of service do appear of course,  for instance when a man has been commissioned from the ranks or when a discharged officer requested such a record after discharge. This normally occurs  when the man was applying for job.

In the case of one well known officer, Lt Col Peter Norman Nissen, inventor of the eponymous hut, there are two pieces of paper in his file. One is his demob certificate, the second notifying the War Office of his change of address. The reason for this is that had had been granted the patent rights to the accommodation hut and a hospital hut. A dispute arose between the government and Nissen over the sale these structures  to the USA, which was eventually settled out of court. 

Instructions for weeders, published in the mid-1932, when much of the weeding took place in regard to officers,  is quite clear about two things a) that officers files could be destroyed after ten years (note "could" not "will") and that the official record of service of an officer was the Army List."

TR