Difference between revisions of "Lists of personal diaries, letters, memoirs"

Revision as of 11:50, 30 April 2015

The letters, diaries, memoirs etc listed below could be linked to specific military units, but each name needs to be researched to find out exactly which unit they were in at the time. Can you help? Pick a name or document below, and try to find their military records to show which battalion they were in.

Here are some resources on researching World War One records to get you started.

Individual items

These names need to be matched to individual units so they can be added to its page. If you can find out which battalions these men were in, and send in your links to have them added to the wiki. If you're working on someone's record, you can also edit the wiki to add a note saying so. Remove the name below once it's been added to a regiment or battalion page.

• Diaries of Captain C A Milnard covering Gallipoli landings (available for free download from the UK National Archives). Officer in the Indian Army: which unit?

• Letters to Gwendoline: One story of Gallipoli told through letters home in memory of Anzac Day (58th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery)

• New Zealand's Roll of Honour 1915 The Auckland Weekly News Illustrated List with the names and photos of 'New Zealand Officers and Men killed or wounded in action in Turkey, The Dardanelles & Gallipoli in 1915'

• Items digitised by Te Papa include the Photograph album of Major J.M. Rose, 1st NZEF - which units are depicted in his photographs?

• India and the Great War has some Stories and Memories that might provide some clues

• There are lots of references to individual soldiers and Indian Army units mentioned in Sikhs in World War 1 on SihkiWiki - can you find sources for them and link them to the appropriate Indian unit?

• There's a stash of fantastic photos in The "Cambrian" Album from the OM77-14 2nd Light Horse Association Records 1914-1920 at the State Library of Queensland. The album includes photos from other units - can you help by adding images and links to unit pages?

• Maurice George Delpratt was a prisoner of war in Constantinople, but what unit did he serve in?

• An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army by Flora Sandes, 'the only British woman officially to serve as a soldier in World War I'.

• The letters of Sister Pearl Elizabeth Corkhill, AANS could shed light on many locations.

• What information is contained in Nursing Adventures: A FANY in France (called 'A Nurse at War: Nursing Adventures in France' in the USA) by Grace McDougall?

• FIELD HOSPITAL & FLYING COLUMN. Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia by Violetta Thurstan.

• Which unit was Charlie, who wrote these postcards to Blanche N Wooton, in?

• Where was Llewelyn Williams based?

• Frederick Heatley Symonds

• With British Guns in Italy, by Hugh Dalton

• Arthur L. Linfoot

• Francis Leo O'Meara and Patrick Julian O'Meara

• Photostat copies of letters from John Alexander Raws and Robert Goldthorpe Raws, 1915-1916

• Arthur Dease

• William Owen War Diary 1916-1917

• Bailey, Herbert Austin (Sapper, b 1873, d 1963)

• Bayley, Francis Wilton (Private), 1896-1974

• Thomas Fredrick (Fred) Littler
  • 1/5th Battalion Cheshire Regiment, UK
  • Royal Engineers: which unit?

• Robert Lindsay Mackay
  • 11th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, UK

• A. W. Miller

• Richard, Jim, Ted, Paul, Topher Berryman
  • Richard: Indian Army Medical Corps
  • James: Middlesex Regiment (which battalion?); Royal Fusiliers Public Schools Battalion (which one?)
  • Christopher: Middlesex Regiment (which battalion?); Army Service Corps (which unit?)
  • Edward: 2nd Battalion 39th Garhwal Rifles, Indian (done)
  • Paul: Royal Navy

• Major-General Cuthbert H T Lucas
  • Commander of 87th Infantry Brigade, UK
  • Commander of Machine Gun Corps training school
  • Commander of 4th Division, UK

• Harry Lamin
  • 10th Training Reserve Battalion
  • 9th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment, UK
  • Attached to headquarters of 23rd Division, UK
  • 1st Garrison Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers

• War diary kept by Captain Neil Cantlie, RAMC, with the 6th Division at the Battle of the Somme, Sept - Oct 1916
  • Divisional Medical Services, 6th Division, UK

• Ely, Dinsmore, 1894-1918. 'Diary letters of Dinsmore Ely, edited by his father, Dr. James O. Ely'. Library of Congress via Internet Archive.

• David Lindsay

• Ralph Dorchel DOUGHTY

• Nursing Sister Helen L. Fowlds

• Private Papers of Lieutenant L H Riddell

• Private McGarrigle was a soldier with 7th Northumberland Fusiliers Observation Corps
  • 1/7th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers, UK

• Letter from John Adams to his mother Mary Adams, 13 May 1916

• Letter from Lieutenant Richard Henry Perceval-Maxwell to his father, Colonel Robert David Perceval-Maxwell, 7 October, 1916
  • 10th Battalion Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), UK

• Letter from Charles Hezlet to his mother, 26 September 1916
  • Commander of 33rd Siege Battery Royal Garrison Artillery

• DeWitt C. Ellinwood Jr. (ed.), Between Two Worlds: A Rajput Officer in the Indian Army, 1905–21. Based on the Diary of Amar Singh of Jaipur (University Press of America, 2005, ISBN 0-7618-3113-4). Which unit did Amar Singh serve in?

Collections of items

• The Imperial War Museum catalogue has details of personal papers, sound recordings, films and objects from the United Kingdom and former British Empire. Sound recordings include interviews with people who experienced the First World War. Many of these interviews can be heard on the site free of charge and reused for non-commercial purposes. The catalogue is searchable and is also indexed by unit.
• c 3000 videos from WWI at European Film Gateway's EFG1914 project
• A list of letters about the First World War on The Letters of 1916 project site. You can also help transcribe letters at their site.

• A list of memoirs and diaries at firstworldwar.com

• Some diaries listed on the Western Front Association site

• A massive list of 'Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences' compiled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L). Pick a name, find out which unit they were with, and add them to the battalion/regiment page!

• Digitised Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) papers from the Wellcome Library

From their blog post '(Re)Discovering the Great War', 'The Wellcome Library has digitized over 130,000 pages of correspondence, personal and field diaries and reports, photographs and memoirs associated with the allied medical services during World War I. Drawn from material presented to the Royal Army Medical Corps Museum and Archive (now the Army Medical Services Museum Trust), the collection covers virtually every sphere of operations including the Balkan Front, the Dardanelles, East Africa, India, Italy, Malta, Mesopotamia and the Middle East, Russia, and South West Africa, as well as the Western and British Home fronts.'

• The Great War Archive contains memoirs, letters and diaries, each of which could be linked to an Allied battalion or regiment.

• An archive of transcribed war diary (Kriegstagebuch), letters and blogs includes a list of diaries from Weltkrieg / The Great War

• The Wartime Memories Project - The Great War 1914-1918 The Allied Army contains many personal accounts, mostly second-hand stories related by family members.

• The Liddle Collection, Leeds University Library. Includes personal papers of over 4,000 people who experienced the First World War, and over 750 sound recordings and transcripts of interviews about experiences of the First World War.

Australian personal narratives

The Australian War Memorial's Anzac Connections lists 188 (at the time of writing) 'Biographies including private records and diaries'

The State Library of NSW has a collection of WWI diaries and letters online. Can you link the authors to their battalion page?

A user list of Great War diaries, letters, reminiscences on Trove (not all diaries may be available online)

British personal narratives

Cymru 1914, The Welsh Experience of the First World War includes some diaries, photographs, letters and memoirs

Cymry'r Rhyfel Mawr / Welsh Voices of the Great War on People's Collection Wales

Welsh Voices of the Great War Online

Personal Diaries and letters of Officers and Other Ranks from the 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards

Herefordshire in the Great War

Canadian personal narratives

If you're interested in finding records for Canadian battalions, the Canadian Great War project has a form to search for War Diaries by unit.

New Zealand personal narratives

Personal Histories of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles (see also the sitemap).

Diaries listed in the National Library of New Zealand's WW100 digitisation project

Off at last the goodbye would have been too awful is a blog post featuring diaries discovered during digitisation at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

"It's just hell here now" is an Anzac Day post from the Alexander Turnbull Library that shows what can be learnt from individual diaries.

American personal narratives

Veterans History Project

Indian personal narratives

• David Omissi (ed.), Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers' Letters, 1914-1918, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). ISBN 0333751450. Compilation of Indian soldiers' letters.

Research in progress

Add notes or links here for diaries you need help researching, missing links from the sites above, etc.