Denis Costello

I thought that the search for the family of 2832 PTE Denis Francis Costello would be straight forward. With his unusual combination of names and the information in his service record I anticipated a quick return. This proved to be wrong. Between Bill and I and the helpful team of the Australian Surname Group we put together a considerable amount of information on the Costello family. Finding a relative proved to be the difficult bit.
Costello was a member of the 1st Pioneer Battalion and there is an interesting comment in his service record that says he was accidentally injured with a knife wound to the chest and that the wound did not occur as part of his military duties. Unfortunately, there is no further information as to why this occured.
This Victory Medal came to me originally from the NSW RSL and is one of only a few we have left from this box.  It will be returned to Denis' great niece.
The returned medal tally is now 1191.

Harold Wilfred Casey - British War Medal

I received the BWM awarded awarded to 238 Harold Wilfred Casey (to access the service record follow the steps in this tutorial) in yesterday's post and became very engrossed in searching for his family. After close to five hours of research I've located the family. Not the fastest bit of work but certainly rather quicker than average.
Harold was born in Bowral NSW, a lovely town which we often go through when travelling between Canberra and Sydney. He had two brothers and four sisters, however one brother died in 1896 aged 10. In the early 1900s he moved to WA with his parents, one brother and one sister. The remaining sisters stayed in NSW, they all married but I could find no evidence of them having had any children.
Harold was initially allocated to the 4th Machine Gun Company but later moved to 16th Battalion, AIF. Harold was killed in action on 4 February 1918. His brother George also served with 16th Battalion during WWI and was a POW of the Germans. He later served during WWII.
Harold's Will names his sister Eileen as his beneficiary but I had some trouble working out if she married. What confused me for a bit was that George's NOK during WWII was listed as T. Stapler. This sent me on a wild goose chase until I stumbled on a marriage in WA of an E. Casey to a T Staples. A bit of cross checking confirmed that the NOK on the WWII nominal roll was misspelt so it was the Staples family I was looking for. Once this was confirmed the search was straight forward. I found the names of Eileen and Thomas' Staples children and a browse of the White Pages offered two possibility. I took yet another punt and sure enough I ended up speaking to the right family. During this conversation I was able to confirm that George didn't have any children so there is no one of the Casey line left. The medal will be forwarded to the family in the near future.
Thanks to Rodney D who sent me the medal.
The returned medal tally is now 1144.

Service Records tutorial

One of the best resources available to researches of WWI Australian military history is the service records of the AIF soldiers who served. These are available free on line through the National Archives of Australia website. On our web site I have a step by step guide on how to access these records but in recent months the NAA website has been updated and the process of getting to the service record has changed slightly. Also, when I first started this blog most of the readers knew how to access the service records. Now I find that many readers need a bit of a helping hand especially when I post a link to the service records. I hope that this tutorial is helpful to readers.
This post was updated on 17 Feb 13 to reflect changes to the NAA website.

To start with access the NAA home page at this link. The full address is  http://www.naa.gov.au/

On the left hand side of the homepage are the words "Search the collection". Click on this link to go to the next page.

 

In the middle of the page is a light blue box with the words "Search as a guest". Click on this link to go to the next page.

 

At the top of the page is a tab that says "Name search". Click on this link to go to the next page.

 

In the family name box type in the surname you are searching. Immediately below in the drop down box select World War I then click "Search".

 

The next page will open and there will be the number matches. Click on "Refine this search result" and a new page will open up. In search boxes insert the first name or the service number to reduce the number of results.

 

This will go to a new page which shows fewer result matches. Click on display.

 

 

On the right side of the page will be a book/page symbol and the words "View digital copy". Click on this and the service record will open up in a new page.