Carol -- > Dear Group, I don't understand how to access the HETRINA. Can anyone > help > me? I am afraid you have to do it the old fashioned way -- find a library which has a complete set. The formal title is: _Hessische Truppen im Amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg (HETRINA) Index nach Familiennamen_ with the editors listed as Inge Auerbach & Otto Fröhlich. Literal translation of the title is: "Hessian Troops in the American Independencewar (HETRINA) Index by Familynames" It comprises six volumes with vol 6 in two parts and remains under copyright protection. The first 5 volumes were published with paper covers in the 1970s and vol 6 in the 1980s. I believe the entire set was reprinted in the last decade and is still available for purchase at the arichives in Marburg, Germany, at roughly 30 Euros per volume. HETRINA is not the "holy grail" as it merely is a computer listing of abstracts from the original records, key punched onto the obsolete 80 column IBM keypunch cards (state-of-the-art technology in the 1960s when the program was started) then processed through a card sorter, then run again through a mainframe which printed out an IBM formated 125 column report. HETRINA is merely a photoreduced copy of that computer printout with a few pages of introduction, part in German, part in Englsih. The printout may not include all the information in the original record (and may include material NOT in the original record as the compliers manipulated some data in order to get the cards to sort as desired) but there is adequate (coded) citation to the original records, explained in the introduction. In order to keep the "event codes" rememberable, frequently two near-duplicate cards were prepared with only the event code changed. For example, an event where a soldier deserted [code 12] from POW status [code 11] would have duplicate cards/lines in HETRINA. Bob Brooks