Roll of Honour Introduction

The Roll of Honour records and commemorates the names of Australia’s war dead. It takes the form of bronze panels in the Memorial’s Commemorative Area and the Roll of Honour database, which is accessible via the Memorial’s website.

Eligibility

Questions of eligibility for the Roll of Honour are determined solely by the Memorial’s Council, and have been considered many times over the years by Council and before it by the Memorial’s Board. The following paragraphs summarise the current criteria for eligibility:

Pre–1914 conflicts

To be eligible, an individual must:

have died while serving with or directly as a result of service with a military unit raised by one of the Australian colonies or, after Federation, by the Commonwealth of Australia; and
have died during or as a result of service in one of the following conflicts, within the specified periods:

New Zealand
Sudan
South Africa
China

First and Second World Wars

To be eligible, an individual must:

have died during or as a result of service while a member of an Australian military force or unit which was or could be sent overseas or, after the entry of Japan into the Second World War, while a member of the Australian Military Forces; and
have died within the specified periods.

Post–1945 conflicts

To be eligible for the Roll of Honour, an individual must:

have died during or as a result of service while a member of the Australian Defence Force; and
have died during or as a result of service in a conflict classified by the Department of Defence as warlike service, and between the defined start and end dates of that warlike service.

Australians who died during these periods of conflict but were not serving with Australian armed forces may be included in the Commemorative Roll.

Specified Periods

The official commencement and cut-off dates for inclusion in the Roll of Honour and the Commemorative Roll are as follows.

Conflict	Commencement of Hostilities	Cessation of Hostilities
New Zealand	1860	1861
Sudan	1885	1885
South Africa	11 October 1899	31 May 1902
China	6 August 1900	25 April 1901
First World War	4 August 1914	31 March 1921 (Disbandment of AIF)
Second World War	3 September 1939	30 June 1947 (Disbandment of AIF)
Korean War	27 June 1950	27 July 1953
Malayan Emergency	16 June 1948	31 July 1960
Indonesian Confrontation	24 December 1962	11 August 1966
Malay Peninsula	19 February 1964	11 August 1966
Vietnam War	3 August 1962	29 April 1975
Thailand	25 June 1965	31 August 1968
Somalia	20 October 1992	30 November 1994
East Timor	16 September 1999	18 August 2003
Afghanistan	11 October 2001	Continuing
Iraq	16 July 2003	Continuing

In previous years, names were not added to the Roll of Honour until the Department of Defence had determined that a conflict had ended. However, since the Second World War, Australians have been involved in a number of conflicts that have sometimes continued over many years. For example, warlike operations continued for various elements of the Australian armed forces in the Vietnam War from August 1962 to April 1975. The Memorial’s Council resolved at its August 2004 meeting that the names of those who have died in recent conflicts would be added to the Roll once a year on Remembrance Day. The Council instituted the change in response to public expectation that the names be added as soon as possible.

Content

Records in the Roll of Honour database contain the personal particulars, unit and the date of death of each person. Some records may contain cause of death, next of kin, town of enlistment and cemetery or memorial details. This information is based on card indexes, known as the Roll of Honour cards, that were used to compile the physical Roll of Honour located in the Memorial’s Commemorative Area. The cards contain information transcribed directly from original source records produced during or immediately after each conflict. In recent years the records on the Roll of Honour database have been enhanced with information from further research and other sources.

Burial Details

Researchers should note that while the details recorded on the both the circulars and the Roll of Honour cards were correct at the time they were compiled, circumstances of burial may have changed. In many cases smaller cemeteries or individual burial sites were consolidated into larger cemeteries, meaning that some bodies were re-interred elsewhere. Therefore it is always best to check the final place of burial through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Roll of Honour circulars

More than half the database records have digital images attached to them from records known as the Roll of Honour circulars. For the First World War, the circulars were forms sent to next of kin seeking details regarding the deceased. For the Second World War the forms were not sent to the next of kin, but were completed by the Directorate of War Graves Services. Circulars for those who died in the Korean War were completed in March 1954 by the Memorial’s Roll of Honour clerk. Circulars were not created for the other conflicts. Researchers should keep in mind that even in the conflicts where there were circulars, a circular was not created for every individual.

Photographs

The Memorial is progressively attaching photographs, when available and appropriate, to Roll of Honour database records. If you have a photograph you would like to be included on the Roll of Honour, or are aware of a photograph on the Collections Search please contact the Photographs section. Other photographs from the Memorial's collection may be found in the Collections Search.

Search tips

Type a first name and a surname into the Name box, for example, Jones or Alfred Jones or A Jones.
If you know which conflict the person was in, select it from the list in the Conflict box by clicking on the down arrow.
Click on the Search button.

Advanced search

The advanced search allows you to search the Roll of Honour using service number, unit, and date of death.

Service number search:

Searching using service number is useful for narrowing down searches on common names. The service number can be used to distinguish your individual.

Note: Officers were not allotted service numbers until the commencement of the Second World War. Also, in the First World War service numbers were not unique to the individual. This means that more that one soldier could be allocated the same number.

Date of death search:

Searching on date of death is useful if you know that an individual died in a certain action on a specific day but you do not know his/her name. However, if someone died at night you may need to search both dates to locate their details. For example, if an aircraft crashed during a bombing raid on the night of the 28–29 November 1942, the crew who were killed may have their date of death recorded as 28 November 1942 or 29 November 1942.

Searching using date of death is also useful for narrowing down searches on common names that have retrieved many records.

Unit search:

The unit search allows you to search for the unit with which an individual was serving. Please note that the names of units have not been recorded consistently. If you are searching for a unit you may need to try different combinations of keywords to locate them. For example the 9th Infantry Battalion could be recorded as 9 Bn, 9th Bn, 9 Inf Bn, 9th Inf Bn, 9th Bn Australian Inf, etc.

The unit search is a wild-card search. If you search just using a number it will return all entries in which that number appears. For example, searching just using 9 with bring back all units that have 9, 19, 29, 29, etc. Searching using just a number will also locate units that have been entered using just a number and those that use ordinals (e.g. 9 Btn and 9th Bn).

Similarly when searching for a type of unit (battalion, brigade, regiment, etc.), you can search just using the first initial to ensure all contractions will be located. For example searching using 9 B and 9th B should locate all units that contain 9 or 9th and the variations on battalion such as Bn and Btn.

Further information

Enquiries relating to information contained in this database, including corrections, should be directed to HonourRolls@awm.gov.au.