The Great War
A Guide to the Service Records of All the Worlds, Fighting Men and Volunteers
by Christina K. Schaefer

World War I has passed from living memory into the history books, receding far enough into the distant past to provide a genealogical challenge. In order to reconstruct the lives, and locate the records, of those who served, fought, volunteered, or were conscripted, researchers must rely on a vast but relatively unknown body resources.

Counting all combatants, the number of men who served in the Great War runs into the millions. Needless to say, finding records on them in the two dozen countries that participated is a daunting and laborious task--now made infinitely easier with the publication of this magnificent guide to WWI service records.

The only book of its kind, its ambitious effort to catalogue service records and related sources is international in scope, covering the soldiers of all the countries participating in the war, from Britain, Germany, and France to Russia, Canada and the U.S.; and from India, Australia, and Japan to South Africa and Brazil.

This is an up-to-date key to genealogical data and can only increase in value as the need for WW1-era information increases.

204 pp., hardcover, 1998, ISBN 0-8063-1554-7