The War diaries of the British Army 1914-1920 .......... now online

G B Simpson, 1918

Now I can be fairly confident that none of the six members of my family who fought in the Great War left a personal diary.

So the publication of the war diaries of the British Army are the next best thing.

They were begun after the second South African War and record day by day the movements of regiments covering everything from training, routine activities to action on the front line under fire.

I first came across them when I was researching one of my great uncles who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force and are available online.

But those for the British army could only be accessed by a visiting the National Archives, so the news that ancestry have now got the diaries available on line is good news.

And these include the Galliopli Campaign which just 100 years ago was in full swing.

"A fag after a fight", 1916

So according to ancestry, “these war diaries document operations for British and colonial units serving in theatres of operations between 1914 and 1920, including Russia, at home, and in the colonies, as well as British military missions and Armies of Occupation between 1919 and 1920. 

The diaries contain daily reports on operations, intelligence summaries, and other pertinent material, and they 

The range of dates shown for individual items does not mean there is a document inside the file for each day between the two covering dates.

No diaries for the campaign in South West Africa in 1914-1915 are included in this series because no British units participated; operations were conducted under the auspices of the South African armed forces.”

Pictures; George Simpson, circa 1918 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and "A Fag After a Fight,” Daily Mail War Postcards, 1916, courtesy of David Harrop