Over one million World War I casualty records now available on Forces War Records website

More than 1 million individual records of soldiers wounded in World War I have been transcribed and made available on Forces War Records.

The Casualty lists are an excellent resource to use when researching a soldier who fought in the Great War 1914-18. At the start of World War I, it was decided to publish casualty lists for soldiers who were reported killed, died of wounds or accident, been declared as missing, wounded or admitted to hospital with shell-shock.

The ‘Daily War Office Casualty Lists’ were first published on 1 September 1914 and printed within various newspapers such as The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Irish Times and The Scotsman until August 1917. In August, it was decided that newspapers would no longer be able to print the casualty lists in full due to the shortage of paper and the effect of morale on the public seeing the great number of casualties daily. Instead, the Daily Casualty List were published as the ‘Weekly Casualty List’ by His Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Forces War Records has now transcribed all the records published within The Daily Telegraph and is working with the National Library of Scotland to transcribe their original collection of the ‘Weekly Casualty List by His Majesty’s Stationery Office’.

These records are of enormous value to researchers, since in many cases the information is not available elsewhere. Researchers should note that the appearance of a name on the list was some time after the man became a casualty – usually around a month or so.

Armed with this information and the War Diary of the man’s unit, the circumstances in which he became a casualty can be researched. Researchers can also use the exclusive Forces War Records interactive map to follow in an ancestor's footsteps while listening to the in-depth commentary.

How-to video

The collection available on Force War Records is likely to include the following:

• Surname
• First Name or Initials
• Regimental Numbers
• Rank
• Regiment or Corps
• Battalion
• Attached Unit
• Gallantry Awards
• Fate (wounded, captured, shell shock, missing etc)
• Duty Location
• Date of Incident
• Place of Enlistment (given as Resided Town)

Explore the collection at Forces War Records.

N.B. Soldiers who were killed are to be found in the ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919’ collection and not within this new collection.