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In their own words: collecting experiences of the First World War
This project aims provide context for an individual's experience of WWI by linking to personal narratives written by people in the same situation. By the end of this project, someone who wants to research a soldier in WWI but doesn't know a thing about how armies were structured should be able to find a personal account from someone in a similar role written at about the same time and place. We'll never really know what it was like for those who experienced the First World War, but we can come closer to understanding it by collecting the words they left behind.
Our aim is find a personal narrative - a diary, letters, memoirs or images - for each military unit in the British and allied armies. Populating the lists of battalions and linking the numerous personal and official diaries, letters, memoirs, etc already online is a huge task and it can only be done with your help.
Have you got a few free minutes to take on a small research challenge?
Getting started is easy:
- Take one of the personal diaries, letters or memoirs listed
- Match its author with a regiment or battalion.
- Send in the results via this form or edit the wiki directly to add their diary to the relevant battalion or regiment page
You can see the difference that contributors so far have made on pages listed in units with personal narratives.
Anyone can request an account for this wiki (but not you, spam bots!) to help out. If you get stuck, just drop me a line; I'm @mia_out on twitter.
Use the links on the left for:
- More about this project.
- Frequently asked questions and site help
- How you can help
- Direct links to specific armies' battalions and regiments
You can find more pages by drilling down through these categories:
- Units arranges units by type.
- Places arranges pages geographically. You can find units by the countries they belonged to.
- Sources is about documents you can use or that need linking to units.
- To do lists pages that give details of things that need doing, and sub-categories of pages that need specific improvements.
- Help pages give more information about how to use the site.
These are some example pages that show what you can do here and how useful the site can be (but they still need some improvements):
- 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, UK
- 2nd Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers, UK
- 1/5th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment, UK
- Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
This project is part of a Transnational Research Fellowship with the CENDARI project at Trinity College Dublin's Long Room Hub. Further information is available on the 'about' page of this wiki.
