DE RUVIGNY’S ROLL OF HONOUR 1914-1918

Two previously unknown factors ensured that the Great War’s disastrous effects were evenly spread throughout the land: the introduction of conscription and the gradual onset of war by attrition. If the old, professional, regular army was shattered at Ypres and the willing volunteers of Kitchener’s new armies destroyed on the Somme, it was these two factors which ensured that the flow of casualties continued undiminished throughout the remaining years of the war on a scale never matched before or since. In the early months of fervent patriotism and enthusiasm when young men queued to join up in the fear that it would all be over before they could have a chance to come face to face with the enemy, the concept of a roll of honour which would give biographical details with portraits of all those who had fallen in the service of their country was obviously thought to be a publishing possibility. The later disasters of 1916 and 1917 would prove that it was not. Nevertheless, the ROLL OF HONOUR is an amazing record and a tribute to the persistence of those who compiled it as well as to those whose names it contains.
Published in five parts, this immense undertaking is now reprinted. Its 1,400+ pages contain the biographies of well over 25,000 men of the army, navy and air force who gave their lives, nearly 7,000 of the entries being accompanied by a photograph. Naturally, in a work of this kind, the length and style of the entries is varied and, where official sources have been used, the detail is restricted to the man’s regiment and place and date of death. Where the family has provided the background, however, the entries are much more detailed and, in the case of both officers and men, often cover a number of column inches to give a real biographical account. This work was designed as a tribute and a memorial but the passage of time has made it much more than that. Here, in an age when interest in the family and its history is on the increase, the photographs and biographies of many of our grandfathers and great grandfathers killed in the Great War are made available to their descendants.
The opportunity to acquire this important archive will be of interest to genealogists, librarians, family and military historians, medal collectors and many others with an interest in the men who failed to return to their families in 1919.