How to Research a Relative's Military Service

August 30, 2026

Most people come to military research the same way: a box comes down from a loft after a bereavement, and in it is a photograph, a handful of badges, maybe some medals, and no explanation at all. This is how to turn that into a story.

Start with what you physically have

Before going anywhere near an archive, get everything you own in front of you and write down exactly what it says. The objects are often more informative than people expect:

Cap badges and collar badges identify the regiment or corps, and the crown narrows the period.
Shoulder titles spell out the unit in letters, which is often easier than reading heraldry.
Medals — British medals are frequently named around the rim with number, rank, name and unit. This is the single most valuable thing in most boxes.
Photographs — look at the cap badge, the rank, the collar, and any background. Photographs often carry a photographer's stamp, which places where it was taken.
Paperwork — discharge papers, pay books, letters, certificates. Even fragments carry service numbers.

Photograph everything before you handle it much, and write down what is written on each item exactly as it appears, including anything you cannot interpret.

The service number is the key

If you find a service number anywhere, that is the thread to pull. Names repeat constantly — there were a great many John Smiths — but a service number identifies one person. Everything else is easier once you have it.

Where the records are

Broadly, and this is the part that confuses people most:

First World War and earlier — surviving service records are held by The National Archives, and a great deal has been digitised and indexed. Be aware that a large proportion of First World War army service records were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, so a missing record does not mean the person did not serve.
Second World War and later — service records are held by the Ministry of Defence rather than being publicly available, and are released on application, generally to next of kin. There is a process and it takes time.
Those who died in service — the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains a free, searchable record of the Commonwealth war dead, including where they are buried or commemorated. It is one of the best research resources of its kind anywhere.
Regimental museums — frequently overlooked and frequently the most useful. They hold unit records, photographs and knowledge that no national archive has, and the people who run them are usually delighted to help.

What you can realistically expect to find

It is worth setting expectations, because disappointment is common:

You will usually find the unit, and often the broad movements of that unit, because unit war diaries survive far better than individual records.
You may not find the person's own experience. Individual records vary enormously in what they contain, and many are brief administrative documents rather than narratives.
Gaps are normal. Destroyed records, changed unit names and transfers between units all break the trail.

The unit's story is often the better route anyway. Knowing that someone served with a particular battalion, and then reading what that battalion did, gets you much closer to their experience than a service record usually will.

Using badges to date a photograph

This is where a surplus dealer's stock becomes a research tool. If you have a photograph and cannot read the badge, comparing it against clear images of known badges is often the fastest way to identify it — and the crown in the photograph dates it against the crown on the badge.

The same applies to rank insignia, to shoulder titles and to the shape and cut of the uniform itself. A great deal can be established from a single photograph by someone who knows what to look at.

A word about buying replacements

Many people, having identified a relative's regiment, want the badge. That is entirely normal and entirely legitimate — a cap badge of the right regiment and period, kept with the photograph, completes the story.

The one thing to be careful about is medals. Replacement or replica medals are freely available and fine to own, but a replica should always be recorded as such for whoever inherits the box next. The most common cause of confusion in family militaria is a replacement bought in good faith fifty years ago that nobody labelled.