Find your ancestors in Australian Imperial Force Nominal Roll 1914-1918

Uncover your ancestor’s World War 1 service history by exploring the Australian Imperial Force Nominal Roll. Learn their rank, unit of service, date of enlistment and more.

Each record includes a transcript of the original Nominal Roll. The amount of information listed varies, but the Australian Imperial Force Nominal Roll records usually includes the following information about your Australian ancestor:

  • Name
  • Service number
  • Final rank
  • Unit of service at the time of death or at the end of the war
  • Date of enlistment
  • Fate also known as Non-effective entry – how that person became no longer effective (for example, if they were returned to Australia)
  • Date of death or the starting date of their non-effect

This collection has been obtained from the Australian War Memorial website. Additional information such as images and details about the records can we found on the source’s website.

Discover more about the nominal roll

The First World War Nominal Roll is a list of approximately 324,000 members of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) who served overseas during World War One. The roll includes those who served with the Australian Flying Corps and Australian Medical Corps, but not the names of those who served with the Australian Naval and Military Expedition Force.

It is believed that the roll was compiled before October 1919 to help with the administration involved in returning AIF members to Australia.

Note that the unit recorded in the Nominal Roll is the last unit in which a person served, which may not be the one that he or she embarked on or enlisted in.

Where a date of the person’s return to Australia is recorded, usually this is the date that he or she embarked on the voyage, rather than the date of arrival which may have been six to eight weeks later.

This data was provided by the Australian War Memorial website.

If the ‘non-effective entry’ field is blank, this means that the serviceman was still serving abroad at the time the roll was completed.

Service numbers were not allocated to officers and nurses, which explains why in their case this field may be blank.