Free British Army WW1 Ancestry Records access (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Saturday, May 25, 2013, 18:41 (4201 days ago) @ downunder

Hi all and thanks for helping clarify this offer, I'm very pleased it is widely available.
From my UK viewpoint as an already registered user (but not paying subscriber) of the UK website I cannot see any emails or promotional web pages c/o Ancestry.co.uk promoting free access. Presumably as I was using the same email address I wasn't allowed to also subscribe to the USA website, I hope other non-USA-based people can access these free records perhaps as new subscribers especially using different email accounts to their UK registration.

Thatsaid, I'm very pleased to see some WW1 Record Sets within the UK site are still available to UK users f-o-c, presumably just for this weekend ?. Unusually these are different than the normal offers and don't include the Medal Cards which is the most complete Record Set they have, so sadly many people won't find their ancestors within these less-complete Sets. Whether I can access US Records for free I don't know. The available UK sets are British Army Service Records and the equally informative National Roll of the Great War (altho' this is not great for West Country parts of the UK).
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/category.aspx?cat=39

As suggested before be patient when searching as altho' initially a Service Record Set may not look like "your" particular A.B.Smith then the enlistment details may well include personal details such as next-of-kin and home addresses. The key when researching Army Records is knowing "your" soldier's Service Numbers; this may well be found in advance using the National Archives' free-access Medal Card set. These hints will hopefully help
http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=39109

Thanks again for highlighting this offer.