photo of a soldier

[shirley barrette]

I found a photo of a soldier www1 and the name was scratched out but his reg no and where he died on the somne and date were there ( this was in my mothers house which we were sorting out when she died and i had never seen it before )i couldnt find a connection to us so wrote to the canberra war memorial to find out his name quite a while later i got his birth cert still no connection one day i was talking to a girl at work who knew the family from his home town so quickly got on the phone and yes he belonged to them , so a 17 yr old soldier finally found a home i had submitted it to the war memorial but was loathe to throw him out I thought this was a bit of super sleuthing ,, i think the photo may have been in a book from the local Op shop we knew of the family

[GeoffD]

Shirley, or any other person who comes across something similar, if you have an Aussie 1914-1918 soldier's Service Number (SERN), then it is a simple matter of going to the National Archives of Australia website (http://www.naa.gov.au) then to the search page, and fill in just the SERN and 1914-1918 in the top two boxes of the search form. All WW1 AIF service records (I think) have now been digitised and are available for free viewing. Be aware, however, that a SERN is not unique; it is possible for two soliders to have the same SERN.

If you have an incomplete name and/or place/date of death only, then the AWM website allows you to search the Roll of Honour database (http://www.awm.gov.au/database/roh.asp) on those criteria. I have an example for today, 1 Sept, but with a surname. From my Grandfather's diary "Sept 1st 1918. Fred Lewis was killed today, poor chap." Just type lewis in the surname and the 01/09/1918 in the date boxes, and full details will come up.

[shirley barrette]

Thank you for that at the time i didnt have a computer , and the soldier concerned was from a town we had no contact with. was curious to find someone with connections to him which i had the good foretune to find Long story Shirley