Many years ago I applied to the ministry of defence for one of my grandads war record , first I had to get my mother to give her permission as next of kin she had to dig out her birth certificate and send them to the mod we then got a letter back saying they would conduct a search for his records but a lot of war records were damaged in a air raid in World War Two made worse by water damage ,but we would still have to pay the fee even though we had no guarantee of them being intact , which unfortunately they wasn’t , fast forward twenty years and I decided to look for my other grandfathers war records , this time I contacted the nearest Mormon church ( a lot keep all sorts of records) and was directed to their records section there they ordered the records on microfilm and within two weeks I was viewing my grandads war records for a small fee , my grandads surname starts with s so I had to look through all the s but it didn’t take that long . So I would give the Mormon church family history centre a ring or email, good luck Dorothy