Catalogue description War Office: Military Secretary's Honours and Awards Branch: Distinguished Service Order Register

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Details of WO 390
Reference: WO 390
Title: War Office: Military Secretary's Honours and Awards Branch: Distinguished Service Order Register
Description:

The register consists of volumes containing details of appointments to the Order of officers of the British and Dominion armed forces, and includes a volume of records of the honorary appointment of officers of allied nations. In addition to details of appointment, the register contains a record of the disposal of insignia and warrant, and a large number of entries are annotated with the date of death of the recipient.

Records within this series are available to download as digital microfilm .
Date: 1886-1945
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

War Office, Military Department, Military Secretarys Division, 1870-1904

War Office, Military Secretary, 1904-1964
Physical description: 13 volume(s)
Access conditions: Available in digital format only
Accruals: Series is accruing. The original volume for piece 13 has not been transferred. The second volume for the foreign national awards is also expected.
Administrative / biographical background:

The Statutes of the Distinguished Service Order, instituted in 1886, require that a register of those appointed to the Order shall be 'kept in the office of our Secretary of State for War'. The duty of keeping the register of an award which was available to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines (and later to the Royal Air Force) thus fell to the Secretary of State responsible for the Army. He, in turn, required his Military Secretary to maintain the register, a task which, certainly during and since the First World War, has been carried out by the Military Secretary's Honours and Awards Branch - MS3 (later MS1b).

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