Operation War Diary launch, 14th January 2014

[spof]

I see there are also places mapped too - http://cdb.io/1hiLRYl

With a discussion about the maps http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000003/discussions/DWD00009o2

[Hollytree]

Chris

I imagine the pre-war entries will be from where the day and month is recorded in the diary but not the year and it has accidentally been allocated to 1914. The Severn Bridge ones are near a place called Rogiet so it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see how geo-tagging might get it wrong if it referred to a place that no longer exists today.

As you say, great animation and it does make it easier to find errors like these.

Glen

I live near Rogiet, and other than housing put in to support the GWR and perhaps the Severn Tunnel construction I don't know of any connection.... but then I can always be corrected. Would the deaths relate to the hospital at Chepstow? Which I think had casualties?

Anne

[spof]

Anne

I think it is just bad geo-tagging rather than a diary saying message received from Rogiet Hospital that Major X has died.

As mentioned in the thread I linked to, there is an island off the coast of Denmark called Hooge so you can easily imagine that causing confusion to the inexperienced volunteer. At least doing the indexing multiple times these errors can be reduced and I think this data was taken from the initial run of diaries while the system was still sorting itself out.

Glen

[HeatherC]

Glen is exactly right about these stray places being caused by bad geo-tagging. Plotting the data like this does enable the odd tags to be easily picked out and corrected. A rough estimate is that about 5% of the tags were incorrect, which as it did come form the early days of the project when people were still getting used to the interface is actually pretty good I think.

Certainly the number of names tagged that will appear in Lives is pretty impressive. Having tagged quite a few pages myself I have been surprised how often non-officers are mentioned and hopefully this will be of great interest to those trying to find out more about their Private soldier ancestor.

[Guest]

Fantastic webpage just saw it a few days ago and working on the 1st Battalion Kings Liverpool Regiment I think it's great that these diaries are becoming more accessible.

[Guest]

Today I downloaded the 1st Bn Suffolk Regt War Diary for 1915 to find a bunch of Welshmen. The diary turns out to be 1st Bn Welsh Regt. Doubtless the latter will prove to be the former. Just FYI. Reported to TNA. MG

[ChrisC]

As a confirmed technophobe I am quite prepared to be labelled "thick", but for the life of me I cannot locate a "Search" function on the home or Diary pages. Do I have to trawl through the list to check? A correspondent mentioned 2nd Mounted Division. I'm damned if I can find it.

Chris C

[HeatherC]

Depends exactly what you are talking about. If you are talking about the Diaries in OWD (the original subject of this thread) then no you can't search and yes you do have to trawl the list. I don;'t think you will find any Divisional diaries there though. If you are talking about the digitised diaries at the National Archives (which is what this thread has veered off to talk about) then yes there's a search box on the front page http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/war-diaries-ww1.htm Can't see anything like the one you mentioned though.

[Guest]

I think that will be WO/95/4293 2 Mounted Division. I don't think it is available online any more, I'm afraid. I do have a copy, and if you let me know which unit you are interested in, I could maybe help?

Mike

[kenf48]

As a confirmed technophobe

Chris C

As diplomatically noted above it helps if you ask the right question.

As Heather says 2 Mounted Division diary has not been opened for tagging in OWD, although the elements of the 2nd Cavalry Division have.

Apart from the reference given, and assistance offered by Mike above 2nd Mounted Division Diary is also shown at WO95/4292 neither can be downloaded at present. No dates are given both are shown as Part III and I've no idea why there are two references as they appear to be the same diary.

For completeness here are the (off topic) links

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C4557445

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C4557446

If given your list of interests you are looking for the diary for the Oxfordshire Yeomanry/Hussars then that is also not yet available for download but is here

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C7364804

Ken

[David_Underdown]

Something a bit odd happening there - it's a bit clearer if you use these URLs (the browse by hierarchy option)

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C4557445?v=h

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C4557446?v=h

It looks like it should be divided into items, but the catalogue references don't actaully include an item reference. It may be some sort of hangover from when there were (low quality) downloadable versions.

For clarity, nothing outside France and Flanders has been digitised in the current programme, and the digitisation for France and Flanders goes up to Divisional level only (ie Corps, Army, GHQ and Lines of Communications diaries have not yet been digitised).

[Guest]

One might reasonably assume the OWD is using the digitised diaries as the source material. As already noted the 2nd Mtd Div diaries have been taken down with no indication of when they will be re-released. The 2nd Mtd Div's Gallipoli diaries were exceptional value and I suspect they have been taken down to slice into thinner chunks. There are a number of GWF members who have these diaries from a few years back.

I have transcribed the whole of the 2nd Mtd Div's diaries (and about 25 additional personal diaries, histories relating to the Div, and I have digitised and OCR'd their published histories), so if you need anything specific let me know. I haven't looked at them for a while but I think there are about 200,000 words of diary material. There are considerable gaps and some unit diaries are lost. Content for their near suicidal march across Suvla plain and frontal attack on Scimitar Hill is pretty thorough. Thereafter the campaign descended into trench warfare so the diaries are fairly mundane. Div was broken up after Gallipoli.

I have 41 accounts of the 2nd Mtd Div at Gallipoli in total (including the WO 95 diaries)

[ChrisC]

I think that will be WO/95/4293 2 Mounted Division. I don't think it is available online any more, I'm afraid. I do have a copy, and if you let me know which unit you are interested in, I could maybe help?

Mike

Thank you Mike, my query was purely on the functionality of the site. Many thanks for your offer though.

Chris C

[MartinWills]

Something a bit odd happening there - it's a bit clearer if you use these URLs (the browse by hierarchy option)

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C4557445?v=h

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C4557446?v=h

It looks like it should be divided into items, but the catalogue references don't actaully include an item reference. It may be some sort of hangover from when there were (low quality) downloadable versions.

For clarity, nothing outside France and Flanders has been digitised in the current programme, and the digitisation for France and Flanders goes up to Divisional level only (ie Corps, Army, GHQ and Lines of Communications diaries have not yet been digitised).

As well as being the case that only Western Front War diaries have been digitised in the current programme, it seems also to be the case that where non-western front diaries had previosuly been digitised they are no longer available. I cite this having discovered that Salonika Diaries previously available seem not to be available any longer.

[Guest]

An interesting diary: WO 95/1610

Five files, 215 MB covering the 2nd Bn York & Lancaster Regt. This file is in a complete mess. It is without doubt the most disorganised I have seen so far.

It is supposed to start in Aug 1914. Page 1 starts on 10th Sep 1914 and page 2 leaps to April 1915. The diary page for 4th Aug 1914 suddenly appears on page 48 of the second file, some 223 pages into the set. It is immediately folowed by 22nd Oct 1914 which is immediately followed by 17th Dec 1915.

I spent a few hours unraveling the diary. It appears that the 1914 diary pages and many of the 1915 diary pages have been randomly placed between the pages of the 1915-1919 diary. I have traced 26 pages spread over 706 pages over five files. The Dec 1914 pages are proving to be elusive.

Just FYI. Reported to TNA.

MG

[Guest]

The Naval & Military Press Archive version is exactly the same.

Mike

[Guest]

From memory I tried to download this file months ago and it was either mis-filed or not available. It was the only file missing from my BEF diaries 1914. Having read rather a few the place names and locations for the period have become familiar which helped trace the pages. Not all the pages have the year. Here is my unraveling;

· The diary starts on page 1 of WO 95/1610-1 on 10^th Sep 1914.

· Page 2 jumps to 17^th April 1915. The file then runs through April, May 1915, then suddenly...

· Page 24: 15^th-17^th Sep 1914 diary appears... immediately followed by

· Page 25: 21^st May 1915 and sets off again chronologically through May, Jun 1915, then....

· Page 35: 18^th-20^th Sep 1914. By now it seems the diary for 1914 is fragmented and randomly distributed between the pages of the 1915 diary. The sequential pages for 1914 are as follows on WO 96/1610-1

· Page 46: 20^th-22^nd Sep 1914

· Page 57: 23^rd-30^th Sep 1914

· Page 101: 1^st-2^nd Oct 1914

· Page 113: 3-9^th Oct 1914

· Page 124: 10^th-12^th Oct 1914

· Page 135: 13^th-15^th Oct 1914

· Page 146: 16^th-17^th Oct 1914

· Page 157: 18^th Oct 1914

· Page 168: 18^th Oct 1914

We now move onto the second file WO 95/1610-2

· Page 3: Cover Page for Oct 1914

· Page 4: 18^th-19^th Oct 1914

· Page 15: 20^th Oct 1914

· Page 37: 21^st-22^nd Oct 1914

· Page 48: 4^th-7^thAug 1914 . Hurrah. Found the beginning.

· Page 49. 22^nd-23^rd Oct 1914

· Page 60. 23^rd Oct 1914

· Page 82. 24^th-26^th Oct 1914

· Page 93 26^th-28^th Oct 1914

· Page 104. 29^th-30^th Oct 1914

· Page 115. 31^st Oct 1914

· Page 137 1^st-6^th Nov 1914... etc

File WO 1610-3

· Page 2: 6^th-16^th Nov 1914

· Page 13: 8-9^th Aug 1914

· Page 14: 24-30^th Nov 1914

· Page 124: 10^th-12^th Aug 1914

File WO 1610-4

· Page 89: 13^th-14^th Aug 1914

File WO 95 1610-5

· Page 27: 15^th-27^th Aug 1914

· Page 45: 1^st-7^th Sep 1914

· Page 56: 8th-9^th Sep 1914

[David_Underdown]

Martin,

Did you include this info with the report, may help speed things up (I think this may have come up in the Operation War Diary forum too).

Hopefully chagnes made to the sorting and scanning process will make this sort of thing less likely in the second batch of scanning that's just got under way.

[Guest]

Martin,

Did you include this info with the report, may help speed things up (I think this may have come up in the Operation War Diary forum too).

Hopefully chagnes made to the sorting and scanning process will make this sort of thing less likely in the second batch of scanning that's just got under way.

Yes. I have offered a complete index of the file. Still don't quite understand how this works. If you have the ear of the team you might politely suggest starting again on this file. There are also 1915 pages embedded in 1916, 1917, 1918 and there are runs of pages 1914,1915,1918,1917 1914 etc... it is as if someone had shuffled the pack. I think it would be simpler to start again on this one.

The challenge with this file is that unless the compiler has knowledge of where this unit was during the War some of the pages will be very difficult to put in the correct order as the year is not always included. The handwriting is key and the best lead. I also gave them my phone number as it would be easier to talk someone through this. 700 pages. MG