This is a Roll of those who fought in the Great War and who did not necessarily die. The idea was to compile a biographical list of the participants. 14 volumes were produced by the National Publishing Company, listing approximately 100,000 participants in the war. Of these under 20% of those listed were participants who died. The volumes are arranged into regions as follows:

Section I: London (W, C and N)

Section II: London (W, C and N)

Section III: London (W, C and N)

Section IV: Southampton

Section V: Luton and area (including parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire)

Section VI: Birmingham

Section VII: London (W, SE and C)

Section VIII: Leeds

Section IX: Bradford

Section X: Portsmouth

Section XI: Manchester

Section XII: Bedford and Northampton

Section XIII: London (SE)

Section XIV: Salford

The National Roll is available to view on the following websites (records can be viewed by subscription or pay as you go credits):

Website:

Website: The National Roll of the Great War

Other Rolls of Honour

A Roll of Honour may exist for a particular military unit and might have been published in a unit history. There may be a mention of the individual you are searching for in a locally, privately produced Roll of Honour for the company he worked for, the school he went to, the football or cricket team he played for, the town he lived in or the church where attended.

Town War Memorials

The First World War Roll of Honour in St Michael & St Mary Magdalen Church, Easthampstead, Bracknell, Berkshire.

 

Most towns and villages in the United Kingdom have a war memorial or plaque listing the names of those who died serving their country in the First World War. In many cases names of those men from the locality who were killed during the Second World War have been added to the memorials of 1914-1918.

Those villages whose men all returned safely and which do not, therefore, have a memorial are known as the “Thankful Villages”.

War memorials vary in shape and size, they may be official or privately funded, some have fallen into disrepair, but many are carefully looked after.

The UK National Inventory of War Memorials (UKNIWM) was established in 1989 as a project to locate all the war memorials in the United Kingdom and to record the names on them. A television programme on Channel 4 called “Lost Generation” started collecting a nationwide database of the names on war memorials and this data was passed to the UKNIWM. The work to build up the database was taken on by the Imperial War Museum London. The UKNIWM has been renamed as the War Memorials Register and is available to search online via the Imperial War Museum website. For more information visit website at:

Website: War Memorials

The War Memorials Trust is also compiling an online project to record, conserve and remember war memorials across the United Kingdom. For information see:

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Newspapers

The Times national newspaper included lists of those killed in action or who died of wounds. Local newspapers often included lists and photographs of local men killed or who died of wounds.

The British Library Newspaper Library at Colindale in north London has an archive to view. Local libraries may also hold archive copies of regional newspapers dating back to the 1914-1918 period.

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Death Certificates

The Death Certificates for British war dead are held by the General Register Office. Enquiries can be made to:

Certificate Services Section, General Register Office, PO Box 2, Southport, Merseyside PR8 2JD

Telephone: 0300 123 1837

Fax: 01704 55 00 13

Email: certificate.services@ips.gsi.gov.uk

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French and Belgian Death Certificates

British soldiers who died between 1914 and 1920 in a hospital or outside of the battle zone in France or Belgium were issued with a French or Belgian death certificate. These records will be in French or Flemish.

They are available to view at the National Archives in Kew, Surrey and are archived with the catalogue reference of RG 35/45-69.

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They are also available online on the official website for Births, Marriages and Deaths. These certificates can be searched for on this website and select the reference RG35-NEW on the index in the right hand margin:

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British Soldiers' Wills