Army Form B.103 - Casualty Form - Active service

Army Form B.103 is an extremely useful document as it gives not only attestation and enlistment details but also movements from the time the soldier stepped ashore in war zone. These documents can run to several pages and are useful additions to - or substitutes for - attestation papers.

There are two date columns on this form and it's the date on the right which is the date of the event.  So in the example above, Private Anderson was admitted to the 31st General Hospital at Port Said on the 12th December 1916.

All document images reproduced on this post are Crown Copyright, The National Archives. Service and Pension records can be searched and downloaded from Ancestry and Findmypast. Both companies offer FREE 14-day trials.

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Army Form W.5080 - names and addresses of living relatives of a deceased soldier

This is a poignant, sad and touching document. It is also extremely useful to today's family historians as it can give a complete family picture of parents and siblings of the dead soldier in question. Most of the forms that I have seen tend to date to 1919 and there was certainly a large print run delivered that year; see the 2/19 below:

For many family historians, this document and a few others like it (for instance medal acknowledgement slips) are as close as we get to being able to pinpoint our ancestors close to a decade after the 1911 census was taken.

The main document on this post is from my great uncle' surviving service record in WO 363. Rfm John Frederick Nixon was killed in action on 3rd October 1918 and this form lists his parents, four brothers and seven sisters and all their addresses. It's gold-dust for the family historian - but I wish it hadn't been necessary to complete this for him.

All document images reproduced on this post are Crown Copyright, The National Archives. Service and Pension records can be searched and downloaded from Ancestry and Findmypast. Both companies offer FREE 14-day trials.