Derbyshire regiments

[mmmgravity]

Just starting to research my grandfather's experience of WWI. His daughter says that he was in the battles of Mons, Ypres and the Somme; wounded twice but survived the war. He did not want to talk about his experiences and left no records. He was living around Youlgreave, Derbyshire at the time of his enlistment so I suspect the recruiting office would have been Matlock. He rode horses on gun carriages (brought up on farm) so I expect that he was in an artillery regiment. His name was George Bowden (b 1895 in Middleton).Name searches on war records have not come up with anything. Can anyone advise which regiments he might have joined?

[simmo1]

Hi

Unfortunately there were a few George Bowden's in the Royal Artillery.
Medal Index Cards, Medal Rolls and a few service records are listed on Ancestry.
DO you have his medals, they will identify who he was?
Other than that it will be hard to identify him.

regards

Robert

[mmmgravity]

Thanks Robert. No medals I'm sorry to say. I can normally rule out records that do not fit by info such as place of birth, enlistment office or age; if any of these are given. So far I've seen no matches.

[Peter Goodey]

The vast majority of surviving records that include personal identifying details are already online. If you haven't identified your man in the Ancestry collections (particularly the burnt documents and pension records), your search is probably going to be fruitless.

Have you actually visited the National Archives website and read the research guide?

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/h...rs-after-1913/

[mmmgravity]

Thank you Peter. I have looked at the National archives website in the past but will now have a better look. I had reached the conclusion that the search was likely to be fruitless because Ancestry had not come up with anything (though I haven't , to my knowledge, searched burnt documents - are they not automatically included?). Joining Forces War Records and this forum was another attempt.