Geoff's Search Engine for ww2

Hi Geoff

I know one comrade who is buried in Italy, I have in fact visited his grave at Cassino.

His name is Geoffrey Burnard and on the CWGC site his unit is listed as 49 Lt. A.A. Rgt,
(Exactly as that, including the spaces).

Using the same criteria I tried to find other war dead from the same regiment but no joy.

What am I doing wrong?



Ron,

This is a little quirk of the database. For some reason, I had problems with the WW1 data with dots - so I stripped them out! The WW2 version works the same.
If you enter 49 Lt AA it should work.
Some of the entries are prefixed with a Bty number, these will be found also since this text field looks for a match anywhere in the data.

The Regiment or Service fields, in this case Royal Artillery, are very consistent made from a fixed list, (selected from the drop down list) but the unit text field can vary and sometimes a stray space or slight difference can lose some records. Not much to be done about this, except the usual search engine rule: enter less data to get more results (but some of these may not be what you want)

Geoff

 

Ron,
I choose ROYAL ARTILLERY in Regiment/Corps: box and put 49th in Unit text:
and got one.
CWGC :: Casualty Details
Owen,

A perfect example of what I mentioned:
49th Lt AA
49 Lt AA

Wonder how many variations there are?
Its possible that 49 will find them all (and any other unit that is 49, unfortunately!)

geoff

 

Geoff

Bingo !!!!!

Entering "49 Lt AA" gave me 83 hits, exactly what I was looking for.

Go to the top of the class!

Many thanks

Ron

 

Geoff
Go to the top of the class!


Thanks Ron, my maths teachers never ever said that!
(don't forget Owen's 84th result)

Geoff

 

Geoff,

Great tool, given me a new lead on a WW1 casualty who has been proving troblesome.

But, I was playing with the WW2 version and was specifically looking for 200 Field Ambulance (I searched on 200 Field Amb), and returned 2 results, neither of which was the one I was after. If I searched on date and not unit I get the right man. I am doing something wrong on the unit search?

Steve

 

Geoff,

Great tool, given me a new lead on a WW1 casualty who has been proving troblesome.

But, I was playing with the WW2 version and was specifically looking for 200 Field Ambulance (I searched on 200 Field Amb), and returned 2 results, neither of which was the one I was after. If I searched on date and not unit I get the right man. I am doing something wrong on the unit search?

Steve

Steve,

The only thing you are doing wrong is trying to use a search engine - they are stupid

I tried a different entry, select regiment RAMC and enter 200 in the unit text field. This found 3: Armstrong, Dawson and Manning. I presume the extra one was Armstrong. Looking a bit further into this, when I collected the index, Armstrong's unit entry was 200 Field Amb - with a double space between 200 and Field. That's why it failed. CWGC must have subsequently edited this, since their record now only has a single space.
I then tried searching 200 Fieldwith a double space, no regiment, and got two results. The new one was Drv. Thompson, who is listed as RASC not RAMC, so he did not come out on my first search.
It sometimes helps to enter less text in a field and select a regiment if possible. When I selected RAMC, it filtered out 200 Field Coy etc - but did not find the RASC man.
I removed dots from the data since their use was inconsistent, perhaps I should have done the same for double spaces.

Geoff

 

Steve,

I've done some work on the unit text index. There were double spaces in the unit text of 555 records, which have now been removed. With over 450,000 records in the system, you were unlucky to find one in such a short search. Thanks for the feedback.
I now get 4 results on this search.

Geoff

edit: I've only done the UK units so far.

 

Geoff,

Brilliant...............I'll try and bear in mind less maybe better

 

edit: I've only done the UK units so far.

Just now fixed the others....the search engine is now slightly less stupid

 

Geoff, Your engine is a wonderful resource and I think it's great that the forum is able to hear things form the horse's mouth (or the stupid engine's boss if you prefer).

How many hours did you have to put in to get it off the ground and why hadn't the CWGC done something similar ?

 

Steve,

I've done some work on the unit text index. There were double spaces in the unit text of 555 records, which have now been removed. With over 450,000 records in the system, you were unlucky to find one in such a short search. Thanks for the feedback.
I now get 4 results on this search.

Geoff

edit: I've only done the UK units so far.

I had a similar problem when I extracted the 10,835 RAAF deaths however mine had an extra space at the beginning of the name.

When I finally added a posting at death section and sorted the names, about 90 were not captured alphabetically.

All fixed now and sorted by every heading (name , rank, age etc.)

 

Geoff, Your engine is a wonderful resource and I think it's great that the forum is able to hear things form the horse's mouth (or the stupid engine's boss if you prefer).

How many hours did you have to put in to get it off the ground and why hadn't the CWGC done something similar ?

Rich,

Is that stupid (engine's boss) or (stupid engine's) boss ?
Parenthesis is very important to us logical computer nuts.

How long it took? The project started exactly 2 years ago, more of a personal database thing. The web version only took a few days to get running but obviously there was a lot of background work already done. I was quite amazed when the web server version actually worked! I had never done anything like that before. I've already stated that the software running on line is about 5% of the total project so far.

Why have CWGC not done this? The search page they have serves its purpose well for relatives looking up their family members. It is not a research tool and we researchers are probably a minority group. Also people can get into a right mess using search engines and I think that is why there are no unit searches available there - it would cause too many customer service problems from joe public, I would think.

You did not ask why I did it? (i) A challenge. (ii) Because I probably could. (iii) These people deserve our attention. (iv) Good fun. (v) Its an anorak thing. (vi) These things should be free.

geoff

 

You did not ask why I did it? (i) A challenge. (ii) Because I probably could. (iii) These people deserve our attention. (iv) Good fun. (v) Its an anorak thing. (vi) These things should be free.
geoff[/

(vi) more importantly.

If someone wanted to make a donation to assist with the running of the site okay however demanding a donation is a disgrace.

The feeling I got when I supplied an 80 year old woman in Sydney with a photo of her brothers grave, which she had never seen, was reward enough.

 

Geoff

I'm still experimenting with your super facility and wondered whether you might consider including the following in your HELP file.

"To find a particular squadron (either RAF or RAC) one needs to enter SQDN and not SQDRN"

Cheers

Ron

ps
Earlier in this thread I said "Go to the top of the class" to which you replied "Thanks Ron, my maths teachers never ever said that!"
I am reminded that once, when as a particularly mischievous child aged about six, my then teacher, a Miss Phillips by name, announced to the whole class "They will hang you one day Goldstein !"
Now, at the age of 84, I think I can safely say I appear to have escaped her prediction !

 

Geoff

Well done! A superb resource. Put my Uncle's Army Number in and up popped his record. I asked the CWGC about the reasons for not havinbg a more detailed search facility and the answer was along the lines of it was something being considered for the future.

BTW, anyone used this? I've found it very useful for bits of research.

Steve W.

 

might consider including the following in your HELP file.

"To find a particular squadron (either RAF or RAC) one needs to enter SQDN and not SQDRN"


Thanks for the tip Ron, I've updated the helpfile.

I think I can safely say I appear to have escaped her prediction !
And I hope you continue to do so!

Cheers,

Geoff

 

Geoff

Well done! A superb resource. Put my Uncle's Army Number in and up popped his record. I asked the CWGC about the reasons for not havinbg a more detailed search facility and the answer was along the lines of it was something being considered for the future.

Might be a funding issue for them. I guess it will happen when they are able to do it.

BTW, anyone used this? I've found it very useful for bits of research.


I've used the WW1 part but it only covers a few cemeteries. They don't seem to have a complete on line database. Seems very odd to me.

 

If someone wanted to make a donation to assist with the running of the site okay however demanding a donation is a disgrace.

And I was just going to ask you for a contribution, since my website is full and I need to upgrade it to continue. - Only kidding, I get an extra gig for a tenner, so no problem. But if anyone wants to follow the donation link on the search engine, please do....

The feeling I got when I supplied an 80 year old woman in Sydney with a photo of her brothers grave, which she had never seen, was reward enough.
Makes all your effort worthwhile doesn't it.

geoff

 

You may have noticed that the search engine is not running. The mods I did in December used over 98% of memory, so a memory upgrade was done over the weekend. Something went wrong here and the site is now not running. The gnomes in my software factory are running slow this week, but it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Geoff