Genealogy Chat

how do you find out if an ancestor went to war and died, i have looked on the naval ratings thinking it might of told me where the person that died was from or their age or something that you could recognise as being 'yours', is there any way i can find this info out, as i'm not even sure if they went to war-just guedding because i cant find marriage or death for them and they would of been 20 amd 22 in 1939. thanks

If you think they may have died in the war you could check the names on the Commonwealth War Graves site here:-

www.cwgc.org

Kath. x

thanks but they are very common names and i'm sure there will lots with the same name, is there any records that show where they were from birth dates or anything that could suggest they are the one you are looking for? thanks

actually just checked that site and its quite helpful...thank you.

You can sometimes work out from which regiment they were in which area of the country they came from.

All you can really do is trawl through all the records for the name you are looking for.

Kath. x

so depending on where they were living depended on what reginment they were in etc, as you can probably tell i have no knowledge of this what so ever, so for arguements sake if they lived in wales then they would of joined welsh guards or something along those lines, they wouldnt of been in the royal sussex regiment?

It really isn't as simple as that. They could have joined any regiment but it is always worth looking at the local regiments to start with.

If you aren't even sure that they joined the services it will be a difficult job to find them if they have a common name.

Some people were in occupations which meant that they didn't have to join up when war started. Do you know what they did for a living?

Is there no one in the family who might have any information about them?

Kath. x

didnt know what they did for a living or if i've got any relatives to ask, if i could find out about these 2 then i might stand a chance of locating some living relatives...its a vicious circle....thanks for the help. Rhian xx

Whilst it is possible a person living in a particular area could be in the local regiment, it is not a hard and fast rule.

For instance a person could be in The Royal Artillery which has no local connections, so these regiments would be made of men up from all areas there are many other examples.

RAMC
REME
RASC
Military Police

In the instance you quoted there is no reason to say that someone born in Wales would not be in the Royal Sussex Regiment, that would not be the case there could be.

Local regiments just taking local men was more evident in WW1 but the scale of the casualties meant that sometimes a whole community was wiped out, so this practice ceased before WW2

George