.The ADM 171 Rolls
The medal rolls for the Navy are split into the Various arms. There are seperate rolls for the RN, RNVR,RNR,RM, and Civilians , the officers within each of these catagories has a seperate roll. Each roll is a large book and the are alphebetical. Due to the shere numbers of men who served there are maany books for each arm, there are 5 books alone for RM other ranks. The appended example is an extract from the roll of the RM. It covers the surname of Dawson
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As you can see, the first column gives name, if you knew a relative was in the navy you could use this roll to see how many of that name served, if you were a Smith you would have problems but a more unusual name could bear fruit. The next column gives rank, the column after the number. Column 4 gives the medals entitled to, and column 5 gives where the medals were sent. Some give a ships name, some a simple S for sent. Those that give univ leg, or WW of FR indicate that the medals were issued to a legatee or War Widow or Father in the case of a man who died before issue. A blank column would indicate that the medals were not issued. the last column for remarks can give some interesting points, the most common is a date ie 1917 followed by a / and another number. This is a casualty reference refering to the year of death and the following number refers to the will. As these medals were comming out during the 20's i have seen many that were referenced as dying in 1924. From the enclose reference you can work out that Arthur H Dawson was a Pte in the RMLI whose number was PLY17507, he was entitled to a 1914/15 star, british war medal and victory medal which were sent by post, conversely David Dawson served as an Acting Bombedier in the RMA, he was a duration only man as his number ends in s (S for short sevice) ,he was entitled to the British War and Victory medals only which tells us that he went abroad after 1915, his medals were issued to a legatee, and he died in 1918.