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VeRBosity
Journal of the Veterans' Review Board
�THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE
Roll of Honour database on the Internet
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Australian War Memorial
The Roll of Honour, recording the names of Australia's war dead in all conflicts, is now available on the Australian War Memorial's website:
http://www.awm.gov.au/database/roh.asp
The information on the database has been transferred from a card index held by the Memorial's Research Centre in Canberra. Primary access to the online entries is by the name of the deceased. The unit, conflict and date of death can also be specified if known. The records contain information such as service number, rank, unit or ship, date and place of death and cemetery details. An example of a search result is shown below:
AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL ROLL OF HONOUR DATABASE
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Kirkpatrick, John Simpson | |
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Number: |
202 |
�Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has also recently made its records available on the Internet. The Commission, set up in 1917 by Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India to tend the graves of the war dead, has posted details of 1.78 million casualties of the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars at its website:
The Commission's records were originally held on card indexes in 3000 drawers which were cross-referenced to 1500 cemetery registers. This made tracking individual records very time consuming. The records were computerised in 1995 and put on the Internet in November 1998 to coincide with the annual Remembrance Day commemorations. Each name on the Debt of Honour database has details of rank, company, date and place of death. The online database now makes it possible to identify the exact location, by cemetery plot or memorial panel, where a person's name is commemorated. The website also has a facility for printing out a specially designed commemorative certificate.
Because of enormous demand from around the world, it is difficult to obtain access to the Commission's website at times and the AWM's website is probably a more practical option for most Australian researchers and family historians.
