About Army Service Numbers 1881-1881

A couple of comments on this blog the other day made me think that I should perhaps just re-state its intent.

1. Army Service Numbers 1881-1918 does not purport to re-publish every regimental number ever issued and the date on which those numbers were issued. That would be bonkers, as well as quite clearly impossible.
2. By and large, with notable exceptions during the Second Anglo-South African War (Boer war) and from 1914 in some regiments, regimental numbers were issued sequentially as far as most units were concerned.
3. This means that if number 1234 was issued in on the 1st January 1904 and number 5678 was issued in on the 31st December 1910, regimental numbers between 1235 and 5677 must have been issued either on or between those two dates.
4. The regimental numbers I publish on this blog are therefore provided as guidance only. As a rule, for each line infantry regiment, I have published a single regimental number and enlistment date annually from 1881 (when a new regimental number sequence was introduced for infantry regiments) until 1914, and then monthly until December 1914.

In other words, the information you'll find on this blog provides broad guidance on when and how regimental numbers were issued in the British Army between 1881 and 1918. In fact it wasn't until 1920 that army numbers replaced regimental numbers and so in actual fact I should have titled this blog, "Regimental Numbers 1881-1918".

All numbers published here come from a far larger database which I have compiled over many years and which I still use daily as a rough ready-reckoner.

As far as I am aware, complete runs of regimental numbers and dates of issue do not survive for the majority of regiments. However, there are some notable exceptions:

1. The Guards regiments have pretty complete runs of men who joined up during this period as they still have in their possession both enlistment registers and papers. Of the five regiments, the Scots Guards have published many of their records on Findmypast, and more will follow next year. The other four Guards regiments are either still hanging on to their records - just - or have transferred them to the MoD.
2. The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest regiment in the British Army, have a complete run of men as a result of their membership lists, nominal rolls, and service cards which are all published on Findmypast.

I know of no other complete regimental rolls although there are of course various battalion nominal rolls which survive or which have been compiled in later years.

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I've borrowed the photo on this post from the Radley College archive. Many of these boys, prefects when this was taken in 1913, would go on to serve their King and Country between 1914-1918.