We can help you find out more about individual soldiers who served with the regiment. This can be a family history enquiry or for academic or general interest research. The information below will help you get started, then get in touch to pursue your research.
Service records
These give really useful information about a soldier’s army career and unlock the story of their service. We can find service records, if they still survive, for many soldiers.
Researching a soldier who served BEFORE 1922?
Complete our research request form with as much detail as possible about the person you want to research. Pay the £45 research fee. It can take up to twelve weeks to respond to your enquiry.
Researching a soldier who served AFTER 1922?
Individual records for soldiers serving after 1922 are held and controlled by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) under their data protection obligations. Getting the service record from the MOD is usually the starting point for your research, but it can take some time.
We have adapted our research service to try to help this situation. We would normally advise you to apply for the service record from the MOD and then get in touch with us. However, we now accept research requests whilst your MOD application is pending.
So, apply to the MOD and ourselves at the same time.
- Complete our research request form with as much detail as possible about the person you want to research and pay the research fee.
- At the same time, apply for soldier’s information from the MOD.
We will provide you with as much information as we can from the sources available to us. We will then keep your research request live until the MOD provide you with the service record. Then you can come back to us, and, using the information in the service record, we can complete the research.
We use the fees from our research service to fund the conservation and maintenance of the museum collection and our archives.
What kind of information do we hold?
We have a wealth of supporting official and unofficial documents, which often contain unique information on individuals. For some periods of the regiment’s history we also have enlistment registers, records of births and marriages, prisoner of war records and punishment books.
Personal memoirs, diaries and letters also exist from most periods. We access official war diaries for each battalion of the Green Howards during the First and Second World Wars. The regimental gazette is a great source of information. Gazettes for the period April 1899 to March 1930 have been digitised and are now available to view online.
Our extensive photograph collection is also a great resource for images of named individuals, and to give a feel for what military life was like during a particular period.
Individual research and interpretation sessions
If you would like to visit the museum for individual unsupported research in our Research Room, please get in touch to book a time slot.
If you want the assistance of our Researcher during your visit, or at a later date to help you understand what you have found, or what we have found for you as part of the Research Service, this can be arranged. It is a chargeable service at £40 to be paid on the day of your visit.