Research Tip: Don't Neglect the Unit Journal

I love finding research tips and notes on other blogs and sites. I thought I would share a couple of ideas from my own experience that might be useful to someone. Especially if that someone is doing research on a family member who participated in World War II.

The National Archives II in College Park, Maryland is a fantastic place to study America's military history. It houses a massive collection of original documents ranging from Field Orders to After Action Reports to Combat interviews. It also has an enormous photograph collection of Signal Corps and other photography.

Chances are, if your grandfather or other family member participated in World War II, you'll find a wealth of information about his or her experience at Archives II. However, let me temper your expectations a bit: Do not go there expecting to find stories about your ancestor neatly written up for you. The material in Archives II is in a very raw state. It requires the hand of a patient researcher to coax out its treasures. The staff is very friendly and knowledgeable and can help you get started. From that point, you have to get a little creative.

The following presupposes that you know the unit, preferably the company (for example, Company F, 414th Infantry Regiment) to which your family member belonged. This information can be found on their service records, discharge papers, citations, pay stubs; just about any official document they may have saved.

There is a box or series of boxes containing the combat paper trail for each U.S. Army Division (my experience is with the papers of the 104th Infantry Division and the 3rd Armored Division). The boxes contain an eclectic mix of first hand documents. Some (regimental histories, after action reports) contain prose accounts of the dispositions, movements, and actions of the unit, and it is tempting to just order copies of those and call it a day.

My advice: Don't stop there. Infantry and armored regiments kept a Unit Journal. The main content of the Unit Journal is a minute-by-minute log of all of the company and battalion reports during combat. These terse, sometimes monotonous reports say things like "1230 F Co strafed friendly fire 100 yds S of 89" or "1845 1st Bl reporting A Co astride rd at 124." Obviously, the first part of the message is the time the report was received at regimental HQ. The subsequent information describes the disposition of a given unit at that specific time.

The beauty of these tweet-sized bits of information is that they are contemporary to the extreme. These reports were forwarded and logged in real time, making them incredibly valuable and usually very accurate primary source material.

Don't be daunted or discouraged by the sheer size of the Journal or the volume of messages it contains. Once you get the hang of reading them, you can very easily scan them to find the reports that pertain to the company to which your family member belonged.

Now for the fun part. The numbers designating the unit's location refer to numbered objectives that that were plotted on map overlays prepared during combat for the use of the unit commanders. The objectives were usually natural (ridges, hills, ponds) or man-made (bridges, crossroads, landmarks, towns) features of the landscape. These overlays (on vellum or tissue paper) and their corresponding maps are often included in the same boxes of materials as the Unit Journals themselves.

Using the maps/overlays and the Unit Journal, you can begin to plot very precisely the location of your family member at any given moment during during his or her tour of duty. Here are some possible uses for this kind of information:

1. Create an outline onto which you can graft your more anecdotal source material
2. Create and share a Google Map with the dates and locations of events
3. Clarify the sequence of events for certain battles
4. Organize a battlefield tour featuring blow-by-blow historical commentary

I have even been able to identify the location of certain stories in my grandpa's memoir based solely on the unit journal data and maps when the timing or physical features described were sufficiently unique.

Now, before you put the Unit Journal back in the box, peruse the appendices. You will usually find a list of combat casualties: the names and dates of battle deaths, injuries, and so forth. This can be helpful in several ways. Obviously, from the statistical perspective you get a very quick idea which were the hardest fought engagements.

I have also used these lists to pinpoint the dates and location of certain undated events in my grandfather's memoir, since he occasionally named individuals who died or were injured in his stories. Just locate their name in the combat casualties list and you have a date. Find the date on your Unit Journal plot and you have a location.