A New Forum for Geoff501.

[von Poop]

This is a new forum section specifically dedicated to Geoff501 and his impressive search engine.

The WW2 Commonwealth Casualty Search Engine

We reckon it's a significant contribution to the field and well worth supporting in every way we can. To that end we've offered Geoff this space to do what he likes with regarding his work, be it updates, announcements or any other 'notes & queries'.
To all intents this is very much 'his' forum & we'll be sorting out full edit powers for him within this area shortly.

We're pleased that he's happy to make use of us and hope it proves a useful resource for the forum & it's members while simultaneously assisting with a serious WW2 related project or two.

Well worth checking out his main cryptography site as well:

The Crypto Barn

In short; Welcome to WW2Talk Geoff, may the relationship prove beneficial to all.

Cheers,
Adam & the Mod/Admin gang.

[geoff501]

Adam and the gang,

Thank you for the welcome to WW2talk and for setting up this sub-forum.

It is hoped that this forum will promote the use of this resource, sort out problems (search engines can be difficult!) and encourage users to suggest additions or changes that may enhance this tool. There has already been some discussion and explanation of problems and some subsequent modifications to the system on the thread started by my pal Tom, from Tipperary, who was very probably the very first user of my search engines.

This is a search engine and not a database. My estimate is that it covers around 98% of UK WW2 casualties (war dead and civilian dead commemorations) and a little more for other nationalities. It may not always be correct (search engine indexing can become out of date if the original data is updated) so in all cases the CWGC record which it links to should be regarded as the true record.

Changes planned to date include the addition of forename/initials searching and some improvement to the Unit Text field. Hopefully these will not take long. The help page could also do with more detailed explanations (but who reads those?).

I hope visitors will please come forward and post if they have any problems or suggestions.

I'm very happy to be able to contribute to this important subject.

Cheers,

Geoff

[Gage]

Well done guys. This looks excellent and very useful.

[PsyWar.Org]

A very nice resource Geoff. Thanks for your hard work setting this up and making it available.

I've just found a possible relative of mine listed as a civilian war dead.

Can anyone tell me the definition of a civilian war dead in relation to the CWGC website? Does it mean a civilian in government employ, e.g. ARP or does it refer to any civilian casualty due to the war, e.g. a victim of an air raid?

Lee

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by PsyWar.Org

I've just found a possible relative of mine listed as a civilian war dead.

Can anyone tell me the definition of a civilian war dead in relation to the CWGC website? Does it mean a civilian in government employ, e.g. ARP or does it refer to any civilian casualty due to the war, e.g. a victim of an air raid?
Lee

Lee,

From the cwgc.org website:

"Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour
During the Second World War, the Commission was given the task of compiling as complete a list as possible of Commonwealth civilians whose deaths were due to enemy action. The complete roll of some 66,400 names is bound in seven volumes and kept near St George’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, where a different page is displayed each day."


The WW2 Civilian roll was requested by Churchill. In WW1, only military and war service deaths (mercantile marine, nursing, etc) were added to The Commissions roll.

[spidge]

With respect to the Irish question, Eire deaths, I came up with 1,000 under the Ireland and Northern Ireland headings with 400? under the Republic of Ireland.

The 400 seems a small amount to me so someone might like to do another check.

[Paul Reed]

This is an excellent development for an important research tool - I am sure this will result in some fascinating threads.

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by spidge

The 400 seems a small amount to me so someone might like to do another check.

I ran this search a while back, I believe it is correct. If you entered republic of ireland into the Including field, leaving other fields blank, it would find those records which have 'Republic of Ireland' in the CWGC Additional Information field. I think only around 75% of records have some information in this field, given by the next of kin. It is possible there are other records with Irish place names that do not have this. You could try searching on Irish counties or towns. It is also likely that this detail was simply not given by the next of kin in many cases. I noticed that quite a few of the results were naval.

geoff

ps I should mention that if you ever get 1000 hits, the engine has stopped searching, as it will only report a maximum of 1000. In this case you need to add additional search terms to get all the matches. The easiest way is to enter a date range.

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by geoff501

You could try searching on Irish counties or towns.

For example entering dublin in the Including field and entering republic in the Not Including field will get another 126 hits, which are additional to your search on republic of ireland.

This search finds all records with 'Dublin' that do not have 'Republic'.

You may have to go on a virtual pub crawl in Ireland. Not a bad idea actually.

(you will also get false hits like 'son of Fred Dublin, of Wolverhampton', if ever he exists)

[spidge]

Originally Posted by geoff501

I ran this search a while back, I believe it is correct. If you entered republic of ireland into the Including field, leaving other fields blank, it would find those records which have 'Republic of Ireland' in the CWGC Additional Information field. I think only around 75% of records have some information in this field, given by the next of kin. It is possible there are other records with Irish place names that do not have this. You could try searching on Irish counties or towns. It is also likely that this detail was simply not given by the next of kin in many cases. I noticed that quite a few of the results were naval.
geoff

Aren't there 20 + counties in Eire...............I am just lazy.

ps I should mention that if you ever get 1000 hits, the engine has stopped searching, as it will only report a maximum of 1000. In this case you need to add additional search terms to get all the matches. The easiest way is to enter a date range.

I thought it was a bit low and also a bit of a neat figure.

Thanks Geoff!