My father moved From the MOD to the National Archives

[Marianthompson47]

Hello

Two years of so ago, I searched the MOD for my father's war records (Pte Godderidge 11400830).

I was told they were in the process of moving records to the National Archives.

However, I can still not find him or his records anywhere and am about to give up.

[Jebber]

I’m afraid You may have a long wait, it’s a massive job for them all to be  catalogued.

[Marianthompson47]

Thank you for replying. I was under the impression they were nearing the end of this work.

[Andy J2022]

There are just shy of 10 million records to be indexed and catalogued, so as Jebber says, a long job. You may possibly be thinking of the transfer process which should be finshed in the next 18 months. The cataloguing will take longer.

TNA are not handling the digitisation of the records themselves. The first tranche of that particular operation is being done by Ancestry, but if your father was not in the REME, or one of the smaller corps such as the Intelligence Corps, RMP, Army Veterinary Corps etc, his records won't fall within the first tranche. 

But that doesn't stop you making a Freedom of Information request to access your father's record. My guess is that your father was born in the 1920s, so bear in mind that under TNA's rules, they will not release records under Freedom of Information (which means the whole world will be able to see the released material) until 115 years from the data subject's date of birth.

Here's how to make the request: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/mod-closed-foi-request-step1

[Marianthompson47]

Thank you Andy. My father was born in 1908. And he served in Graves, whatever that means.

I am grateful for your link to request information.

[Rena]

You learn something new every day.  My late OH served in the RAF for 12 years and I never heard mention of a Graves section.

I've now looked it up and found this:-

<The term "Graves" is not a specific section of the British armed forces, but refers to the graves and memorialization of service members, primarily those maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).
During World War II, the responsibility for handling British Army and RAF graves was split, with the Army Graves Service handling Army graves and RAF personnel graves in Western Europe being initially handled by Army units due to an agreement between the Air Ministry and War Office, though the RAF later advocated for its own units to handle its own graves.

Army Graves Service: A branch of the British Army that was initially responsible for handling graves in Western Europe, including those of RAF personnel.
RAF Graves Service: A service that the RAF had to form to handle its own graves because of its initial lack of responsibility for its own dead. It was not an operational or combat role, but an administrative one.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC): The CWGC was the primary organization responsible for maintaining war graves for the Commonwealth forces after the two World Wars.

Service-funded funeral: After January 1948, all service personnel who die in military service and receive a service-funded funeral are entitled to have their grave marked with a military-pattern memorial, and the government will maintain it at public expense. >

[Andy J2022]

More information here: https://britisharmyingermany.com/combat-service-support-arms/15516-2/graves-registration-and-concentration/
and here: https://historypage.net/raf-missing-research/
and here: https://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/graves-registration-units.95724/ (Images from this thread are only viewable by WW2Talk forum members). One of the documents is shown below.

[Marianthompson47]

I have in my possession a letter written by my father on 6th November 1945.

It is addressed to:-

Graves Reg. Branch
C/O L of C H. Q
B.A.O.R.
(Ref Col. WEEKS
H.Q. L. Of C
B.A.O.R.)

It is stamped A.W.G Hq Brussels. Then a word I cannot decipher.
It is witnessed by a major.


Brussels is where He met my mother.

He writes that he has known my mother since October 1944 and intends to marry her.

I cannot include this letter here because it says it's too big, although it's not.
Thank you very much for all your help. ☺️

[Andy J2022]

As far as I can tell the men of the Graves Service were drawn from a number of capbadges. There were some Sappers (Royal Engineers) who were responsible for surveying the precise location of existing (temporary) graves, RASC clerks for recording the information, drivers (RASC again?), and general labourers who would probably have come from the Pioneer Corps.

Both the Army War Graves Service and the RAF's Missing Research and Enquiry Service (MRES) worked with the Imperial War Graves Commission which was (and as the CWGC, still is) a civilian organisation responsible for creating and maintaining the central war grave sites and collecting into them the bodies of men who had been buried in dispersed temporary graves. The wishes of the next of kin were considered when it came to deciding whether to re-inter bodies already buried in formal civilian burial grounds such a churchyards

I'm not sure if you put up that address in order to have it explained, so forgive me if you already know what it means.

LofC is Lines of Communication -  this refers to the huge administrative and logistics area stretching back from the fighting troops to the Channel ports through which supplies and manpower was brought forward to where it was needed.

BAOR is of course the British Army of the Rhine which was the name given to the troops within the British sector of occupied Germany. It did not include the Berlin Garrison. RAF Germany (RAFG) was the other component of the military in Germany. Both came into existence shortly after VE day. The post war tasks were immense. There was the rounding up and screening of the German armed forces, investigating war crimes, administering and policing the civil population until the German civil government could be re-established, helping to rebuild key infrastructure such as roads, railways, bridges and factories, all while there was enormous public pressure back in Britain to release men back into civilian life.