When I tried many years ago. 30 to be precise,  to find information on my grandfather's Seaforth Highlander service. The Army sent back some information and penciled lightly on the form were those words "burnt records".  Was there a fire at storage facility or was it just the Army getting rid of old records?

 

More recently I have found his Medal Cards and some lists with his name and Medals entitled to online. But not enlistment papers or discharge or transfers to HLI. So I was thinking that they were lost at that point.

 

Anybody heard of this "burnt files"

In the 70s the records dept did burn destroying many records. If memory serves me it was near the M-Z names that were lost.

 

My dad’s records were destroyed in that fire. Last name begins with C. 

It is well documented online about the fire if you look up military history documents fire. It happened in 1973

 

That fire destroyed American records in St Louis I don't think they would have had the recorders for the Seaforth Highlanders.

5 hours ago, qed4 said:

That fire destroyed American records in St Louis I don't think they would have had the recorders for the Seaforth Highlanders.

I’m glad somebody was paying attention. I wasn’t.

I found through one of my UK research friends, that the records for British Army regiments were partially destroyed in 1940 during the Blitz.  So it looks like between the fires in St. Louis and London a lot of history was lost.

Unfortunately, most of my Dad's records were burned in the fire (his last name beginning with a D) but fortunately he kept some of his documents like his EIB award certificate, his Discharge/Separation docs showing his basic info, CIB, medals, etc.