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Lives of the First World War

Just received this email from FMP.

Exciting news - get more from your subscription

As part of your annual findmypast subscription, we will soon be including access to our newest partner site, the Imperial War Museums’s Lives of the First World War. Over the next week, we’ll send you a unique code that can be used to give you 12 months free access to Lives of the First World War, usually priced at £50.
 
When I was in London I came across this lovely memorial "Animals in War" and found among the tributes, left I presume on Remembrance Sunday last year, one to an Able Sea Cat . Although it is from a later round of hostilities I wanted to share it with you. There is another tribute to a cat from WWI it took some digging but here is a link.
 
Anybody else having problems with the web site? I came across information on a Canadian soldier I wanted to enter . I found his name but now there are "connection problems.". Won't download my dashboard either.:mad:
 
Britjan said:
Anybody else having problems with the web site?
Click to expand...

I have had problems on and off since the start. One of them (though far from the only one) has been that our internet security (Kaspersky) doesn't like the site, and sends warning messages. Net result is that I have given up.....
 
Liberty said:
I have had problems on and off since the start. One of them (though far from the only one) has been that our internet security (Kaspersky) doesn't like the site, and sends warning messages. Net result is that I have given up.....
Click to expand...

Kaspersky on my PC is perfectly happy with the site, but maybe you've been doing something more ambitious than me?
 
Tim said:
Just received this email from FMP.

Exciting news - get more from your subscription

As part of your annual findmypast subscription, we will soon be including access to our newest partner site, the Imperial War Museums’s Lives of the First World War. Over the next week, we’ll send you a unique code that can be used to give you 12 months free access to Lives of the First World War, usually priced at £50.
Click to expand...
Like Peter - see his latest newsletter - I received my unique code for free access to Lives of the First World War from findmypast on 1 July, just as we were going on holiday, so I didn't have a chance to activate it before the two week deadline was up. Yesterday I emailed findmypast to explain the situation and ask if they could extend the deadline. I had a courteous and positive response and now have free access to Lives of the First World War. Well done, fmp!
 
As I understand it from information on the website, the first set of records added to Lives of the First World War were from the British Army medal index cards. I'm trying to find a Jessie Millar Wilson who served in France as a YMCA volunteer. She appears in the medal cards list at TNA as Jessie M Wilson - ref: WO 372/23/45501 - but I cannot find her in a search on the IWM site.

My search at Lives of the First World War identifies a Jessie M Wilson who was an Orderly in the British Army French Red Cross but she is not the same person. I cannot find this Orderly Jessie M Wilson in the TNA index although there is a Jean M Wilson fitting that description - ref: WO 372/23/45500 - and her medal card appears on the same page purchased from TNA as Jessie Millar Wilson's.

Since she is in the British Army medal index cards list at TNA, should I expect to find Jessie Millar Wilson on the IWM site, and if so, does it seem likely that they have confused two different people? It's difficult to be sure when the medal index card references at the IWM site only include the archive reference and not the full references for individuals.
 
My sympathies, Pauline. It's hard to say what might have happened. The records differing by one digit might mean a single record/person OR that the numbers were allocated alphabetically, thus bringing together those with similar names, and they are 2 different people. It is worth reminding yourself over and over that no intelligence was applied in the loading to the site. I don't mean this to sneer at those who did it, it is just how it was done. They loaded what the index cards seemed to say, and it is now that human brains (e.g. yours and mine) are looking at the data and improving on it, making connections etc.

Also it is far from certain that everyone has made it onto the site - this was one of the big disappointments when it started out, and I don't think coverage has progressed much. All the records to start with were people who had served overseas with the British Army, with no guarantee of complete coverage. Everyone else, from all other services, etc. has to wait.
 
Many thanks for your thoughts - I'd been wondering if I'd been getting confused in expecting to find her on the site. I think I will need to contact them and see if they can sort it out.
 
This may be a first for IWM..... I saw "Roger Waters, The Wall" which had its world premiere in Toronto this week and was moved by his tribute to his grandfather who died in WW I and which resonated with me. So I included this link to my remembrance of my two great uncles at IWM.
 
To my surprise and, in a way, amusement I came upon a 2nd cousin 2 removed on the Lives of the First World War site who died at the age of 17. Nothing surprising in that except that he was a Midshipman on board HMS Victoria, which foundered off Tripoli in 1893!!
 
It's taken just over 4 months but it seems the problem I raised in August (see #168 above) about Jessie Millar Wilson has finally been sorted. When the British Army Medal Index Card transcriptions were uploaded to FMP it became clear, at least with the women's cards on the page of images I'd purchased, that the names and details were misaligned, with the transcribed details coming from the card previous to the one for the person named.

I ended up contacting the Lives of the First World War site, then FMP and finally TNA, and initially was told that the records of about 1000 women were affected, and that a fix should be in place by 11 Nov or shortly afterwards. In fact, it took until yesterday for the first batch to be sorted but hopefully it won't be too long before the rest follow.

I'm still not clear just how many medal index cards were affected, and I hadn't found any discrepancies among the men I've been remembering on the Lives site, but anyone who has taken information on women from these medal index card transcriptions alone, via Lives of the First World War or FMP, would be well-advised to check the original.
 
Well it's been a long time since I've gone public on this forum subject although recently I have been in "conversation" with some of the members who have posted regularly in this thread. The ambitious project to remember the 8 million men and women who made a contribution during WWI is not doing well with only 133,000 "remembered" in some fashion.
First though I want to give a big THANK YOU to Peter for starting me on this journey when I joined LC on May 1 2008 and who then created this incredibly well run forum. Second I want to thank Adrienne again because last year she drove me to the little village of Saxlingham in Norfolk so I could see the war memorial where the names of my two great uncles are inscribed. I had already put together a community on the IWM to remember the 13 men listed but seeing it in person was the impetus I needed to complete it as much as possible. The community listing sat dormant until yesterday when somebody not only corroborated the details I had added about a young soldier who was just a name to me but uploaded photos and history.!!
I have faced a two hour commute by public transit to my part time job since we moved and there's a 45-60 min segment when I can sometimes just let my mind wander if I take the express bus. A number of random thoughts have been coalescing as I adjust to living in a new community. It was rocked last year when Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a reservist from Hamilton lost his life in a senseless act of violence while on volunteer honour guard duty at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. I decided that having read that 100,000 Canadian attestation papers from WWI have been made available at the IWM site I want to help to jump start an effort to get them all remembered. Today I have an extra reason to do so.
 
If any of you are tempted to join the IWM initiative message me (start a conversation) and let's chat. I have recently joined a closed Facebook group of serious contributors to the project and can help you decide if it's a root ( sic but left in place because its a malabobism!! )you want to go. If nothing else it will help you appreciate a well run forum.
 
For want of a better place to post this, here is an account of the restoration of the only surviving ship from the ill fated Gallipoli campaign.
"On 6th August The National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) will open HMS M.33 to the public for the first time in her history, following a distinctive and extensive conservation project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). Come the centenary of her launch, HMS M.33 will be the only First World War warship to allow visitors to walk her decks this year. HMS M.33 is positioned in No.1 Dry Dock at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, alongside HMS Victory and the Mary Rose Museum."
The dockyard is well worth a visit and this looks like a very interesting addition
 
Tim said:
Just received this email from FMP.

Exciting news - get more from your subscription

As part of your annual findmypast subscription, we will soon be including access to our newest partner site, the Imperial War Museums’s Lives of the First World War. Over the next week, we’ll send you a unique code that can be used to give you 12 months free access to Lives of the First World War, usually priced at £50.
Click to expand...
Does anyone know if this is a one-off offer, or can you renew it for a second year provided you maintain your FMP annual subscription?
My first year expired a while back, and I applied for another code, but that was five weeks ago and I have heard nothing from FMP, despite the fact that they indicate that you should receive the access code within 21 days. I have also contacted their helpdesk and although I got a reply saying that it may take longer than the 24 hours to respond because of a higher than usual number of emails (presumably 1939?), it is now 11 days and no response.
 
Andrew, some time back, like you, I applied for another code but that was the last I heard from FMP. So then I wrote to Lives direct and they (that is, Yazzmine) replied very promptly with the following message: "Thank you for your email. Apologies that you have not received your code, I have now added 12 months free access to your account.
With kind regards,
Yazzmine
Lives of the First World War Support"
So I suggest you write to Lives, not FMP.
 
I have managed so well without the support of FMP that I forgot that when I applied for the extension I gave the wrong email address and didn't clue in until several weeks later!! I should do it properly because the advantage is that not only can you use FMP records but you can create/maintain communities at LOTFWW.
Andrew do you mind sharing with us how many people you have remembered and your overall impressions of the website?
 
Since being nudged by Britjan I have remembered several more people and have even started a community. I know some people have remembered thousands of men and women, but I still think the people we remember should mean something to us personally. Perhaps I'm wrong.
 
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