War heroes’ stories traced by Melksham company

A MILITARY history website based in Melksham has war records going back to the year 1350 with over six million entries about people who have served the country during wartime.

Forces War Records has a record of soldiers who have served in the forces from medieval times right through to the present day.

Users can find ancestors who were serving during the Napoleonic Wars, including Waterloo and Trafalgar; Victorian conflicts like the Boer War, African Wars and Crimean War); World War One and World War Two as well as more recent conflicts.

The website www.forces-war-records.co.uk has a team of military researchers and experts based in Melksham who uncover layers of military history and believes it has the most in-depth accurate military records in the country.

Records include those from the British Army, Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Marines, Territorials – and even the Merchant Navy.

Forces War Records (FWR) was created six years ago at the request of sister site, Forces Reunited, when members had hit dead-ends whilst looking for military service information on their ancestors using other genealogy sites.   Uniquely, Forces War Records contains records for British and Commonwealth armed forces personnel that are cross-matched with over 4,000 regiments, bases and ships going back to 1350.

Search results can include such information as an individual’s rank, nationality, service number, campaign medals, regiment, battalion and promotion dates and more.  Unfortunately, many records have been lost or destroyed over the years, but Forces War Records has one of the most comprehensive collections available.

Typical further files are those killed or injured in action, those mentioned in dispatches or awarded medals.  The site also holds many exclusive lists which are unavailable elsewhere.  They include imperial prisoners of war held in Italy, 1943, Home Guard officer lists from 1939-45 and The British Jewry Book of Honour, 1922.  With such a breadth of information it’s no surprise that the military records of well-known names such as Douglas Bader, Denis Thatcher and John Le Mesurier can also be seen on the site.

Forces War Records is owned and run by Dominic Hayhoe, a former Army chef who spent six years filling the stomachs of British troops and, on one occasion, HRH Princess Diana (who went back for second helpings of Dominic’s curry).  Having left the Army aged 21, for a career in IT and the fledgling digital industry, in 2001 Dominic set up Forces Reunited.  This hugely popular reunion site for ex-military has a million active users, making it far and away the largest British Armed Forces community on the web.  Forces War Records followed in 2008.

Forces War Records now employs over 60 people in Melksham, including its transcribers who add, on average, 200,000 new records to the site each month. The site aims to hit 10 million records by October 2015. Each month, FWR receives around 150,000 searches from 18,000 people across the world, with the current most common search being for WW1 ancestors.

The company remains committed to supporting the UK economy; as Dominic says, “We feel we have an obligation to employ UK staff, rather than outsource our data work overseas – and to pay our fair share of UK taxes.”

Initial searches are free, but for a subscription costing, at most, £8.95 a month, users have complete, unrestricted access to Forces War Records’ data.  Every time a search is made all files are cross-referenced automatically and every relevant article will appear where a particular ancestor is referenced.

Original documents transcribed – Every detail of these original, often fragile and fading records is painstakingly transcribed by a team of fastidious data entry analysts.  To ensure the very highest levels of accuracy they are all UK-based with English as their mother tongue – and Forces War Records is the only site that transcribes virtually all its own data, meaning records can be amended or altered if more verifiable, correct  data subsequently comes to light.

FWR has also compiled a fascinating historic documents library that holds over 1,000 publications, some more than a hundred years old.  Pictures, journals, poignant and beautifully written personal war diaries are just part of the archive.

Expert researchers and ‘personal research’ service – Forces War Records’ customer support is exceptional.  It employs a team of professional genealogical researchers, many of them history graduates or former military personnel who add supplementary contextual nuggets to the files.  For instance, a record noting an ancestor’s ‘emergency commission into the Medical Corps’ is explained to the lay person as a period when more doctors had been urgently recruited.

For those trying to solve riddles of old black and white military snapshots, photo experts can help with when they may have been taken and other fascinating insights.  Combined, all of these additions paint a much fuller picture than can be gleaned from a simple name record.  A visitor forum and Forces War Records shop, selling bespoke memorial scrolls and reproduction medals, enrich the experience still further.

When the ancestral trail goes cold, help is only a click away, with expert historians on hand to act as personal researchers. For a fee of just £99.95, Forces War Records can unravel more complex mysteries.

Latest additions – To coincide with the centenary of WW1, Forces War Records has also just acquired the hospital admissions and discharge registers of well over one million WW1 casualties suffering from injury or illness.

Whether from field ambulance, to casualty clearing station, to hospital train and ship to stationary and general hospitals, users can trace their ancestor’s journey from the Field of Flanders back to the British mainland. Despite the size of this collection, it comprises just a fraction of the original number of records, the vast majority of which were destroyed or have been lost in the intervening years, making it priceless information.

The site has also recently started uploading five rare collections of Far East prisoners of war (FEPOWs) data – and these details will be free to site visitors.