Forces War Records as the name suggests lists millions of records specifically related to the military. As they are a niche site they can cater far better than the general sites to military records and with each name record you generally get a lot of supplementary data, such as information on the unit they individual may have served in, or the ship they served on, information on medals awarded, battles fought in etc.
No site lists every individual ever born and Forces War Records is no different. However, they do have a very good reason for this. Approximately 50 million or so individuals have served since the 1800′s, but most of the time only officers were recorded unless an individual died in battle or was awarded a medal. In addition to this the British and German did a good job at destroying lots of records in the 2nd World War, and what ou are left with is a possible few million records. At last count they had about 5 million actual name records.
If we have one criticism of the site, it is that it can take a while to drill down to the specific person you are looking for before registering if you don’t have their service number. It’s a small complaint I know, but not many sites deal with this very well IMHO.
I’ve used this site and found most of my mums side of the family!
I’ve just signed up for a month.
Only problem is it doesn’t tell you which records you’ve looked at, in a column of 20 you have to remember which one you were on.
Out of three members of my family I know were in the army I found two.
I tried the site and wish I’d found it sooner. Wouldve saved me a fortune with Ancestry!
I’ve also used this site. Whilst some of the records I looked at I could have got elsewhere, they do also have collections that I haven’t seen anywhere else, so well worth a look. I would happily recommend this site.
I was also a member. I found it a little bit hard to search as they had so many records, but that’s better than not enough! I found a ton of info about my great grandfather so I would recommend this site.
looking for william robert nathan hallas he marry my grandmother ELLA SOUTHALL . THANKYOU from Pauline .
Forces War Records Review
I too have used this site and whilst I couldn’t find my WW2 ancestors ( I believe those records are still held by the MOD) they did have more on my WW1 ancestors than Ancestry.