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.