The battlefields are visited regularly to focus on the local significance of how the war affected Farndon and from the outset it was intended to try to find and visit as many of the graves of the soldiers recorded on the Farndon Port War Memorial as was possible.

This included visits to memorials for the missing, including Tyne Cot and the Menin Gate in Belgium, or the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme in France. Those with known graves lie in immaculate cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. There are also war graves and memorials in St Chad's Churchyard, the parish church for Farndon.

All the men are recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and we have copies of those files. You may wish to look up a name from the memorial on the website, or try your own surname. The site contains advice on how to narrow your search.

We would like to piece together a record of where the men lived and worked or if they had a family. Some were very young and still living at home with parents and brothers. Where was their house? Are there any photographs of them still in existence? Photographs of their street or workplace?

The census is a survey taken by the government every 10 years to collect information on the population of the United Kingdom.

From 1801 to 1831 the censuses were simply head counts with no personal information on individuals recorded (except in exceptional cases). From 1841 personal information on individuals was recorded. The most recent census available to those researching the period of the First World War is 1911 - records must be 100 years old before they are released into the public domain. Detail recorded was as follows;

• First, or Christian, name
• Surname
• Relationship to the head of the household
• Age
• Gender
• Occupation
• Marital status
• Place of birth
• If disabled, nature of disability

Census returns from 1841 to 1901 are held at the Family Records Centre on microfilm/microfiche. The Family Records Centre has various finding aids and street indexes to help you use the censuses to find your ancestors. For information on how to use the 1901 census online service, or microfiche service at the FRC, see the FRC census research pages.

The National Library of Wales has copies of the census from 1841 to 1891 for the whole of Wales.

If you are outside of the UK, you should find copies of censuses at your nearest Family History Centre, run by the Mormon church.

The 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901 censuses for England and Wales are available online

at www.nationalarchives. gov.uk/census The censuses have been fully transcribed.

www.familysearch.org has a facility for searching the 1881 census.
You can also purchase CD-Roms with a name index to the 1881 census. Pay sites such as Ancestry.co.uk and Find My Past also have complete sets of Census records available for download.

Many regiments have regimental histories which detail campaigns they have been involved in, such as Graham Maddock's classic Liverpool Pals.

Besides a soldier's (or officer's) personal file the other major source of information is the Medal Card Index, also in the National Archives. This is the most complete listing of British service personnel in the First World War. The National Archives has now completed the digitizing of the Medal Index.

Most soldiers who served with the British Army in the Great War qualified for campaign medals, normally the 1914 (or 1914-15) Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. If all three were awarded, they were commonly referred to as 'Pip, Squeak and Wilfred'. If only the British War Medal and Victory Medal were awarded, they were usually referred to as 'Mutt and Jeff'. The Army Medals Office recorded soldiers' medal entitlement in lists known as rolls. The Index Card available on line provides the reference to where the soldier is listed on the Rolls, which are organised by regiment or corps.

The information found on the Medal Card will include the soldier's name, rank and serial number, his regiment or corps, sometimes (but not often) his unit (such as his battalion or Field Company RE), his date of entry into a Theatre of War (uncommon after the end of 1915), his date of death (if he died during the war), the campaign medals he was awarded and the reference numbers that allow the soldier to be traced on the Medal Rolls, which are not available on line.

It is important to check the actual Medal Rolls because they can give extra vital information about a soldier, such as his battalion, that allow further research to be undertaken. This is particularly true of soldiers who served in the cavalry, yeomanry and infantry, but much less so for the larger corps, such as the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers and Army Service Corps.

The Imperial War Museum website has further information on the actual medals

Once a soldier's unit has been identified it is possible to find out more about it. All units from battalion level (and the battalion's equivalent in other corps, such as a Field Artillery Brigade) upwards were required to keep War Diaries on active service. These diaries are preserved in the National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew, in record series WO 95. War Diaries rarely mention ordinary soldiers, but they do provide a detailed account of the unit's movements and activities.

Absent Voters Lists were compiled by local authorities at home. They show the names of soldiers and sailors who were absent from their normal homes because of World War I service. The lists are organised in ward and street order. They are particularly valuable, as they give the man's rank or rating, unit, battalion, ship, etc and his service number. These details are the key to further research on WWI servicemen. In order to find the relevant List you would need to know a person's actual address during the period 1914-18.

You can now search and download the service records of more than 7,000 women who joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (1917-1918), later Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (1918-1920).

Essential Reading:

Army Service Records of the First World War by William Spencer(3rd edn., Richmond: Public Record Office, 2001)