* Recording military service

[ganstey]

I'm struggling to find a good way of recording various aspects of my ancestors' military service. I've tried creating various custom attributes, but they have very strange wording when appearing in reports.

The sort of information I need to capture is all the information from the WO97 records, plus things like medals and details of bombing raids.

FH doesn't seem to have much support for military information, which is surprising as there is a lot of information available for anyone who served in the armed forces. Maybe I'm missing something.

How do others record this sort of information?

ID:1283

[slowhand07]

I have received the following advice from Nick Walker: You could 'create a custom event' because there aren't any military related standard events. If you look at the properties for an individual and select the Events tab you can then click on the 'Add Event/Attribute' button. In the list of events there is an option 'New Custom Event for Individual' and on the list of attributes there is an option 'New Custom Attribute for Individual'. If you select one of these it will allow you to create your own attributes or events. Generally it is not recommended to create them unless you really need them. e.g. rather than use a custom event 'Stationed with Army' it is probably more sensible to use the standard event 'residence'.

My comments: There would appear to be no specific provision within GEDCOM for military service and unlike other software Familiy Historian remains true to GEDCOM.[cry]

[ganstey]

I have tried creating custom events/attributes, but I can't seem to come up with suitable names for them, such that they make sense when included in reports. That's the bit I'm struggling with [frown]

Seems strange that the GEDCOM standard doesn't have anything for military service, but does contain some rather esoteric (to me) fields such as 'possessions'.

How do others record information such as promotions, punishments, medals, campaigns, etc.?

Graham

[Jane]

Version 3 will have some features to help with this, as sentence structure can be defined for each custom event/attribute.

You would have to ask the LDS for the reasoning on the gedcom standard.

[nsw]

Hi Graham

As I understand it the GEDCOM standard was developed by the LDS church and so many of these rather odd fields are to do with the way they record church related information. Custom attributes and events are the way to deal with military details. The problem can be getting the wording to look right in reports. In the new version of Family Historian which is due in the next month or so, I believe that there will be facilities to set sentence structures for each custom event/attribute and this will be welcomed by many people.

[Edit: Sorry I was writing this at the same time as Jane so it is the same answer really!]

[ganstey]

Thanks Jane & Nick. I wasn't aware it was the LDS who defined the GEDCOM standard, but now I know that, the list of attributes and events makes sense.

I had seen that V3 will make things easier, but wondered how others had dealt with it. Guess I'll just have to wait for the postman!

Cheers
Graham

[RSellens]

Hi Graham,
Like the other replies in the thread, i use a Custom Attributes for recording military deatils. I have created a series for the main 'events', so i have :

'Military Enlistment' - on this i record the service number, the date/place joined and which force (i.e. British Army, Royal Navy, etc).
'Military Service' - On this i list the dates, rank and unit of the individual and any notes about that peiod of service.
'Military Award' - On this attribute i record the award, date and any reason for the award.

These are report quite well on the Individual Summary & Family Summary reports, which i tend to use quite a lot, and almost work on the narative report.

Richard