Personal Documents

Personal documents such as the Soldiers Paybook shown in the picture above. These provide good detail on the service man and his activities during his term of service. The WW2 paybook is known as an AB64.

Letters and postcards kept by the serviceman can also give good information into the servicemans history. Talk to the wives/mothers/sisters of the serviceman sometimes you can be lucky and find that the relatives kept the letters sent.

Photographs

Talk to the Relatives/friends of the serviceman. Do they have any photographs taken at the time. It doesnt matter if the person you are researching isnt in the photograph, but it could help in locating another person.

Friends/Family

Talk to the servicemans friends and family ,they can be perhaps one of the best sources. Sometimes they may not want to talk about the bad times so ask them about the good times. Dont interrogate them and be prepared for "skeletons in the closet". Exercise discretion at all times, you should never force people to tell,sometimes the experiences can be so traumatic that they have no wish to remember ,respect them for their wishes.

Does the person regularly correspond with other former veterans?

Maybe he drinks down the pub or local British Legion bar with an old mate/s?

Maybe he goes/gets invited to regimental reunions?

Does the regiment have a renuion?

Internet

By reading this page you are already leveraging the power of the Internet. Many museums,veteran associations have email contacts and they are generally very helpful in your research.

Regimental Publications

If you know the regiment ,does it have a regular publication/newsletter ? Can you get back issues? How far do they go back? If the regiment was amalgamated into other regiments do they have a newsletter.

Authors

Have you found a book on the regiment in question ? Is the author still alive? If he is write to the publishers and ask to be put in contact with them. They could save you a lot of work .