[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by Morecambe Ex Pat

That is the man and thank you very much for that.
The man is my wife's Granddad and we don't know much about his war experiences because, like many returning from the horror, he never talked about it.
That article has solved more mysteries than you probably realise, we also have a photograph of him in his L&YR railway uniform and we have been trying to work out what his cap badge says but it is not very clear. The word we couldn't make out was VANMAN but your article has confirmed this.
Where were the service records when they were destroyed?
We have a website, see my signature but I am only listing information regarding family. Is it OK to put that article on our website?
Once again, thanks for adding to our family knowledge.

Hi Morecambe, yep if its your family web site by all means, the web site I was refering to is the one where I think you found the AVL-18.

The WW1 service records were being stored in a Warehouse awaiting a decsision, some one ordered that 1 in every 50 be removed for evaluation purposes, they became known as the unburnt records, Acncestry calls them Pension records which is a load of bull.
Every man had two sets of records, one set remained in England, whilst the other set traveled the world with his division, and was kept upto date by the clerks, every so often amendments would be sent to, England and the home records updated.
The remaining records had been in storage when jerry dropped some incendiaries, thousands of records were destroyed not just by fire, but think what it would be like when the fire hoses were turned on rack after rack of paper files, it would be like a snow storm, other WW1 stuff was in that warehouse and over 20 tons of stuff was lost.
Then we have 1000's of records still in use at pension offices up and down the country, what became of them, especially as pension offices were closed and amalgamated, binned more thn likely, they've never been seen since.