Family history research often involves delving into military records to uncover the service details of ancestors who had served in the British armed forces. One invaluable resource for such research is the officially published Army, Navy and Air Force Lists. These are a set of books that list officers and warrant officers, detailing their ranks, regiments, and service details originally published in bound tomes for the War Office. Subscribers to TheGenealogist have access to an extensive collection of digitised Army Lists that can be used to significantly enhance the understanding of an ancestor’s military career.
These records meticulously list officers by regiment, rank, and seniority, providing a detailed snapshot of the officer corps at any given time. This resource is an essential aid for tracking the careers of officers as they offer a chronological record of promotions, transfers, and retirements providing a wealth of information that can be crucial for family historians.
Army Lists can be used to provide details on the seniority of officers, showing the dates of their promotions and any brevet ranks they may have held. This information can be vital in understanding an officer’s career trajectory and periods of active service, as can dates for when they left the armed forces. Information about officers who have retired or resigned is also included in these records, often with the dates of their departure from active service. This can be particularly useful for determining the duration of an ancestor’s military service.
Extra information that an Army List can provide you with is where the officer was serving in staff positions, or those holding special appointments. Was your officer an instructor or an aide-de-camp? This can provide additional context to an officer’s career and their contributions to the military beyond their regimental duties. We will look at a young officer in a staff position later in this article.
In addition to the British Army, the lists often include officers serving in colonial forces and the Indian Army, reflecting the global reach of the British Empire and some officers may transfer from one to the other, as in the example in our case study below.
Case Study: A Remarkable Officer’s Career
Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valour “in the face of the enemy” in Britain and various Commonwealth countries.
His soldering began when he served in the Boer War as a private. It continued when he was commissioned into the British Army serving in the First World War and the Second World War. Wikipedia notes that he was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he had written, “Frankly, I had enjoyed the war.”
The clues from the Army Lists
To demonstrate the usefulness of the Army Lists, we shall use Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, as our research subject. By delving into the Army Lists on TheGenealogist, a family historian could trace Sir Adrian’s career and be given clues to use to take their research even further.
Carton de Wiart’s early postings, after receiving his commission, can be found by looking at the Hart’s Army List for 1908. As a lieutenant, Adrian Carton de Wiart was serving in the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards and had been appointed as the aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Hildyard, Commanding the Forces in South Africa.
Looking closer at the information on this page we can see that he was first commissioned in the British Army as a Second Lieutenant on 14 September 1901 and then promoted to Lieutenant on 16 July 1904. In the footnotes, however, we discover even more about him where we read that he first served in the South African War with Paget’s Horse and afterwards as a Lieutenant in the Imperial Light Horse. He had been dangerously wounded at Douglas in 1900, seriously wounded at Bethlehem in 1901, slightly wounded at Harrismith in 1901 and had been awarded a medal with three clasps.
With this information we can then research deeper into his service and find that at the outbreak of the South Africa War in 1899 he had ditched studying law at Oxford and enlisted as a private soldier by lying about his age and using a shortened version of his name. As Trooper Carton he fought in the Second Boer War and was wounded in the stomach and groin in South Africa early on in this war and was invalided home receiving the Queen’s Medal with three clasps.
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Another entry in these military records allows us to track his promotions. An Army List from September 1918 shows Adrian Carton de Wiart’s date of birth and his promotions. His first appointment date as a second lieutenant in the Dragoon Guards (D.G.) is recorded as the 14th September 1901, he having come from the Imperial Light Horse. Carton de Wiart was then made a lieutenant on 16 July 1904 and a captain on 26 February 1910. There then follows details of his promotion to major and then lieutenant colonel by 1917. This document also reveals his two positions as an aide-de-camp in South Africa and his spell as an adjutant to the Territorial Force. A particularly fascinating snippet is that he was “employed with Somaliland Camel Constabulary 23 July 1914 to 7 March 1915”.
Using the insight from this record we are then able to research into this engagement and discover from a regimental history, also on TheGenealogist, that he was appointed as the Adjutant of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars Yeomanry on 1 January 1912, this being the Territorial Force referred to in the 1915 Graduation List of Officers of the British Army when he was promoted to the rank of Captain. A further entry in these regimental histories records him giving up this appointment on 23 July 1914 before sailing for Somaliland.
It was during his time with the Somaliland Camel Force between July 1914 to March 1915 that he lost an eye and a part of an ear. He went on to fight in Flanders, where he was severely wounded several more times and then, at Zonnebeke, where he lost his left hand.
By the time that the August 1917 Army List was published he was now recorded as a Temporary Brigadier General having been appointed to that rank on the 12th January. However, his substantive rank was that of a Lieutenant Colonel and so he appears in the October 1918 list in that section of officers. This particular page reveals some useful dates for his promotions which can aid the researcher significantly.
If we then search forward through the years we will then find in an Army List for August 1924 that the now Major General Carton de Wiart is listed amongst other men that have received the Victoria Cross.
A trawl of other military records on TheGenealogist’s site and Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart is recorded in the online database of Medal Index Cards, 1914-1920 as a recipient of the Victoria Cross [London Gazette, 9 September 1916], for his behaviour at La Boiselle, France 2-3 July 1916. We will also find his numerous entries in the Mention in Dispatches records here as well.
We can search for him in the Casualty Lists on TheGenealogist which will return a number of records for this warrior from WW1 as well as from WW2. One that catches the eye is a document correcting a previous entry where he had been listed as a prisoner-of-war. It emerges that he had been captured in Italy and had attempted to escape with other officers by digging a tunnel. He made five attempts, altogether and once managed to evade capture for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant.
This interesting record, detailing that he was no longer a POW, is from October 1943. It transpires that in August 1943 the Italians took him from his prison and drove him to Rome. The Italian government was planning in secret to leave the war and wanted Carton de Wiart to relay the message to the British Army about a peace treaty with the UK.
The Army Lists are an indispensable resource for family historians researching military ancestors. Its recording of officers’ careers offer invaluable insights into their service history providing specific dates, their ranks and other details. TheGenealogist has significantly enhanced access to these records through digitization, making it easier for researchers to uncover and document their ancestors’ military careers without having to find a library with a decent run of these old books. By leveraging the comprehensive information in the Army Lists, family historians can construct narratives of their ancestors’ service, enriching their family history with personal and historical context.