Regimental Numbers (for Beginners)
- Amanda T
- May 8
- 3 min read
If you already know about regimental numbers in the First World War you may as well stop reading here, this article is intended for those who are just beginning their military research and need a quick course in the basics.
Right, to anyone who's still reading, hopefully this will answer your first questions about regimental numbers from the First World War, and enable you to use them to find out more about your relative/research interest's wartime service.
Why are regimental numbers important?
Regimental numbers are vital for WW1 research.
If you are researching a soldier and you have a medal or some paperwork, you will have his regimental number, rank and regiment (inscribed around the rim of WW1 medals).
If you want to research a soldier but don't know his regimental number or his regiment, you can only hope he has an unusual name or his service papers have survived (only 30% still exist from WW1).
RESEARCH STEP 1: find out his regiment and regimental number.
Look on medals, papers, letters etc.
If you don't have any of these, go to the free database of Medal Rolls Index Cards on Ancestry and search for his name. This collection is the most complete record of those who served overseas with the army but doesn't include anyone who wasn't eligible for a medal (home service only, for example).
What is a regimental number?
Ok, yes, the answer is basically in the name but bear with me.
The British Army has a hierarchical structure, with Corps, Regiments, Battalions and Units. As I'm trying to keep this simple, if you'd like to know more about them I recommend you visit The Long Long Trail, an excellent website by Chris Baker which will answer most of your questions about the First World War much better than I can!
Each man, upon enlistment, was allocated to a regiment, and a battalion within that regiment, and they were given a number. This information was used to identify them in all their service papers so you will see something like
Private 48558 Noll, William, 13th King's Liverpool Regiment
This example means that William Noll was with the 13th Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regiment, his rank was Private and his regimental number was 48558. That's pretty straightforward and it is recorded on his medal roll index card:
However, the number was only unique within the regiment, not within the army, so there were men in other regiments with the same number as William Noll, this is why it's important to give the number and the regiment together.
Did each man only have one number?
Not necessarily, and for several different reasons:
Movement - In the pre-war system, men were given a new number if they were posted to a different regiment or sometimes transferred to a different battalion within their regiment. This resulted in some men having multiple numbers recorded on their service record. If this applies to your soldier, his medal index card will have an entry like this:
This man served with the South Lancashire Regiment with the number 10194 and was later posted to the Royal Field Artillery with the number 112535.
Renumbering - changes to the Army numbering systems were made several times during and shortly after the First World War. I'm not going to explain them all here but if you want to find out more, check out The Long Long Trail website. which contains incredibly useful information on how to research soldiers.
Knowing about renumbering is useful because the medal records are often all that we have left of a soldier's service record. By looking at the numbers allocated we can make some educated guesses about the dates they joined regiments and sometimes which battalions they were in within the regiments.
Officers did not have numbers there will usually be a note on their medal card showing that they were commissioned as an officer with a rank, regiment and date, but it won't have a number for them. Officers also had separate medal rolls to rank & file.
Prefixes - some numbers have a letter or digit in front of them, separated by a slash. These prefixes were used inconsistently and can indicate a particular type of enlistment, a certain battalion, corps, reserve, a region of the country, an unusual role (eg army gymnastics staff) and the same letter was often used in different ways by different services. It's always worth looking them up as they can often give interesting snippets of information, such as the fact that a battalion was recruited from Public Schools.
The useful links at the end of this article include a very useful blog with a good list of prefixes.
Useful Links:
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