Soldiers' final wills released 100 years on

The final wills of thousands of soldiers killed in WWI have been released to the public almost 100 years after the war began.

(File: AAP)

The final wills of nearly 250,000 British soldiers killed in World War I have been released to the public for the first time.

Jon Apthorpe, commercial director at information management company Iron Mountain, explained that the letters were never received by the soldiers’ families.

“A lot of the wills were kept for operational secrecy so they weren’t made available at that time,” he said.

"We've now made them available and it's unfortunate they weren't available at the time of death, but as you can imagine things were a lot different in those days."

A new online database allows the public to search and save the documents.

It has already attracted over one million hits from 100 countries.

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