Record class CAB45 at TNA

[Tom Tulloch-Marshall]

I was recently looking at one of the CAB45 files which relate to the Somme (pieces 132-138 incl) - just trying to see if there was any discernible pattern to the way the papers had been filed, - by subject for example. It all seems to be very haphazard, however the individual papers are all paginated and filed in chronological order, and the only reason for doing that - I thought - would be if they were to be indexed.

Does anybody know if they were - indexed that is - and if they were then where are the indexes ?

regards - Tom

[bmac]

I thought they were just in alphabetical order by respondent.

[Tom Tulloch-Marshall]

I thought they were just in alphabetical order by respondent.

Yes, - but as they are tagged, why bother to paginate them ?

[bmac]

Too ensure they had all the pages? There never seemed to me to be system beyond surname order but perhaps I am missing the point somewhere.

[Tom Tulloch-Marshall]

Too ensure they had all the pages? There never seemed to me to be system beyond surname order but perhaps I am missing the point somewhere.

Having "had all the pages" doesnt seem to have bothered the War Office too much elsewhere ................ most war diaries, for example.

The "missed point" is that I was asking / hoping that somebody might have some information about possible indexing of these parts of CAB45.

(I realise it might be a difficult question - maybe "too difficult" )

Tom

[Chris_Baker]

I think you may have hit upon something here, Tom.

(For the uninitiated, CAB45 is a collection of documents at the National Archives in Kew. It contains responses from hundreds of officers to drafts of the Official History that they were sent by Sir James Edmonds as he was writing/editing the history. It is an invaluable resource. The series is organised into "battles", so one for the Somme, one for Arras, etc. Inside each one, the documents are arranged in alphabetical order by name of the respondent, so if you are looking for a mention of a particular location, placename etc it is a hard task to find them).

There surely can be only one reason for pagination, which is use the page numbers in an index. Edmonds and his cohorts would have been very wise to have some sort of index that said "right, who mentioned the Crucifix at Bullecourt, May 1917 .... look it up ... page 155 and page 223 of the Arras collection".

If only we could find that index, it wouldn't half make searching easier.

Is there a collection that Edmonds left, as Official Historian rather than as personal papers, anywhere?

If not, I wonder how much effort it would take to actually recreate an index? A good project for someone.

[bmac]

Is there any mention of this in Green's 'Writing the Great War'? Don't have a copy myself. Edmonds papers are at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives.

[Tom Tulloch-Marshall]

I've gone through the indexes / precis of contents to the Brig.Gen. Sir James E Edmonds' papers at the Liddell Hart Centre and it looks very unlikely that there will be anything relevant there.

Next thought was the Army Historical Branch but "Your Archives" contains the following advice > "The Army Historical Branch has been replaced by Corporate Memory (Analysis) branch, part of the DG Info directorate with UK Ministry of Defence (MOD). This branch is not an archive and requests for historical information received from members of the public are diverted, in accordance with standard MOD procedures, to organisations such as museums and The National Archives."

The Corporate Memory (Analysis) branch - for goodness sake's ! - and they probably paid some "consultant" £250,000 to come up with that twaddle

Regardless, - does anybody have any other ideas ?

regards - Tom