My father-in-law died recently and one of the thing we found was a photo album from his father. It has tons of pictures of his ship, USS Smith Thompson, and the rest of the Asiatic Fleet. It also had pictures and postcards from Cheefoo (Yintai) and Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China and a letter from a sailor on the HMS Despatch. I have done as much research as I could, but I'm running up against the limitations of my local library and I really want to be able to reconstruct as much of his time in the fleet as I can for her.
Thank you!
Hello there! Hopefully someone can help you out with book recommendations, but I also wanted to direct your attention to our Guide on Military Identification. It provides a number of different resources, including how to request service records from a number of national agencies around the world, as well as graphical aids to assist in deciphering rank, unit, and other forms of badges or insignia. While the users here may still be able to lend you more assistance, hopefully this will provide a good place to start!