Royal Field Artillery Diaries

[Sunbird]

I'm trying to find the war diary for 30 Battery 39th Brigade RFA. Were RFA diaries kept by batteries or smaller units within the brigade?

Also on Ancestry1918 seems to be missing from the 39th Brigade RFA war diary.

Any clues gratefully received.

Chris

[rflory]

Royal Field Artillery war diaries were mostly at the brigade level, although some brigade war diaries in the early part of the war include the diaries of the individual batteries within the brigade. The war diary for 39th Brigade, RFA can be found at The National Archives under WO 95/1249. It can be downloaded on the TNA website but unfortunately it is in six parts at £3.45 per part.

Dick Flory

[Sunbird]

Thanks Dick, on Ancestry the 39th Brigade RFA diary is 612 pages. I wonder if that could be different to the digital diary on the NA website, or perhaps they are the same thing?

Chris

[rflory]

Chris: As far as I am aware they are the same thing - the diaries on Ancestry were filmed at TNA.

[David_Underdown]

The ancestry diaries haven't been split down into the individual item's as on The National Archives website, but overall contain exactly the same images. So in Discovery each of the six parts that Dick refers to would be around 100 pages of the 612 you can see in total on Ancestry. The sub-divisions are usually based on a range of dates (complete months so far as possible).

[Sunbird]

Thanks for that David, I may have to download from the National Archives to see 1918 which is missing from the Ancestry copy.

[rflory]

David Underdown wrote: 'The sub-divisions are usually based on a range of dates (complete months so far as possible).'

David: I wish that were the case! At least in the case of RFA and RGA brigade war diaries it is very hard to understand how the sub-divisions were made (even for the ones where the entire diary is downloadable currently). Some brigade war diaries are a single download with 100s of pages; others (such as 159th Brigade, RFA) are divided into two parts with each 160+ pages and divided in the middle of the month (the first ending on 10 November 1917 and the second starting at 11 November 1917. In the case of 25th Brigade, RFA the war diary is divided into 9 parts (each of 52 to 55 pages, except the last which is 9 pages) and each of the parts ends and begins in the middle of a month. Makes absolutely no sense to me!

[David_Underdown]

Well, that was the intention, it didn't always work out like that, particularly in the first run of diaries that were put online (those up to divisional level). There's also a distinction between cases where diaries have been fully itemised, and wehre you find a whole piece for downlaod, but as several files. Those breaks are inserted automatically based on file size, without human intervention unfortunately. The more recently uplaoded ones (GHQ/Army and shortly Corps) should be better.

[David Porter]

The more recently uplaoded ones (GHQ/Army and shortly Corps) should be better.

Not really, something very wrong here - http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=238429

[David_Underdown]

David, corrected details given in the linked thread. Overall the error rate is much lower in the newer material, but we will of course continue to work to make it lower still.