All British soldiers who went overseas qualified for at least one campaign medal.

Campaign medals records

The recording of a man's entitlement to medals and the issuing of them to the man (or, if he had died, to his next of kin) was recorded in a great list, called a roll.

An index card was created for each man, giving a reference to each roll that he appeared in.

Obtaining a copy of a man's medal index card

This is a good and usually easy place to begin to research a soldier. If his service record can not be found, it is the key to the only useful record of his service that you are likely to find.

The index cards have been available at the National Archives for many years. You can search and view them on microfiche if you are there in person. The cards have been scanned and can be downloaded from the Documents Online section of the National Archives website. There is a fee to download it. When you obtain the card this way you will find it is on a page with (usually) five others of other men of the same name. It is in black and white and only has the front face of the card.

The original cards are now in the hands of the Western Front Association, who stepped in when it appeared that the Ministry of Defence was about to junk them in recent years. The WFA has arranged for Ancestry to scan them and you can also download them for a fee from their site. At time of writing this is work in progress. The new scan is of both sides of the card and is in colour, although there is information on the back only of a small proportion of the cards.

If you know the man's regiment and number, you'll find his card. If you do not have a number you could be in for a considerable effort in determining which one is him. If he is a John Smith, even if you know his regiment, you will have a very long "shortlist" of cards. If he has an uncommonname, then the number of "possibles" is very much fewer and if his name is very unusual that you should find his card easily enough.

The cards can be difficult to understand: here's our guide to interpreting a medal index card.

Obtaining a copy of a man's entry in the medal roll

Having the soldier's medal index card is rarely enough to tell you much about his service. As in the case of Tommy McSloy above, you will have his number(s), regiments and possibly a date of embarkation to a theatre of war. You will also know which medals he was entitled to. But you need his unit if you want to find out where he went and what he did.

The rolls are long lists, by regiment, of men who qualified for the medals. There are separate rolls for the 1914 Star, 1914-15 Star, British War and Victory Medals and Silver War Badge. This is a page from the King's Own (Royal Lancaster regiment) roll for the British War and Victory Medals. Note: the rolls of the Silver War Badge are referred to as lists.

In Tommy McSloy's case he is listed in two rolls: the 1914-15 Star and the British War and Victory Medals.

The real value in the rolls is that they usually give the man's unit. This is from the same page, closer up. It can be seen that, for example, William Howard served with the 8th Battalion of the regiment.

Not all give this information: the rolls of the larger Corps (Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, Army Service Corps, Labour Corps, etc) usually do not.

Some give more: for example the rolls of the London Regiment often give the date of entry and departure from the theatre of war. For men who did not qualify for the 1914 or 1914-15 Star, this information is very rarely given on the index card.

So don't stop when you have the index card. You've only done half the job and you may have the key to much more interesting detail.

The rolls are held at the National Archives in document series WO329. They are not online. You will either need to visit in person or hire someone to do it for you.

There is a key at the National Archives that allows you to convert the reference given on the card to the WO329 piece number.