War Diaries, incomplete with different WO references

[stiletto_33853]

I keep coming across vast swathes of missing diaries with a note stating that due to court martial cases they have been removed into a different WO reference number. Given that these files were closed for 100 years would it not been a good idea for the National Archives to replace these missing sections before they even started the scanning process???

Most of these men have been pardoned so what is the problem?? I have come across diaries where these cases have been cut out from the middle of the page, but come across the attachment many times, to my mind it is now a nonsense with these diaries needing to be complete. Not huge sections missing because of misplaced sensitivities whereas the 100 year rule is past. Very frustrating and annoying.

 

Andy

Edited 29 September , 2020 by stiletto_33853

[Guest]

Hi Andy.   Avery interesting post-the more so for the paranoid mind at the metropolitan end of Essex (ie Me).  3 different comments  but the  end game in this is: How much more stuff relating to "personnel" is still on closure?

 

1)  WO 154/58

 

             Try getting that to come up.  Then click on the link   Discovery throws up the following- telling me hat it can be downloaded for free- then when you try to order it, Discovery says it has not been digitised and is not available. 

 

Adjutant and Quarter-Master General. Transferred to WO 154/57-58

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Reference:	WO 95/2516/1
Description:	Adjutant and Quarter-Master General. Transferred to WO 154/57-58
Date:	1915 Aug. - 1918 Sept.
Held by:	The National Archives, Kew
Legal status:	Public Record(s)
Closure status:	Open Document, Open Description

 

 

2)  Can you quantify what number of these WDs you have had trouble with ?   or which units?   I have just been going through 32 RF (East Ham)  WD which does contain details of FGCM with name and charge and,usually, outcome

 

3)  I have raised in a previous thread  the possibility that there is still material on closure relating to "misconduct" by named individuals The previous example was for the officer POW debriefs -the ones usually marked "Exonerated" on the MIC. When some of these folk have not been traced, there may be a (reasonable,I hope) presumption that some officer POWs may have failed the exoneration interviews- not much point in holding them if everyone "passed". With that-as I am sure you have examples of- there is often a printed form with the admin. code "A.G.3" . The printer's code suggests that 10,000 of these forms were printed in late 1918. BUT- they have reference numbers for individuals which do not correspond with any other known service number-suggesting strongly that "AG3" kept a registry.  Then, it would seem to be reasonable to assume that these MIGHT have been kept on 100 years closure-  and the big questions  a) Do they still exist?  b) Where are they?

      I made a mistake on FOI to MOD,assuming that AG3 was ADJUTANT-General, when actually its is ADVOCATE-General.  As the latter is for matters with actual/possible legal issues, I could well see why they were/are on closure-some of the men could well have been around to the end of the Twentieth Century.

 

    Your pic. is another strong hint that there is still a chunk of stuff out there. At least for the war diaries, you have a definite location for the retained stuff - The National Archives rather than MOD. The caveat is whether the excised material was returned to MOD or is held under closure at Kew.  Do the staff have anything to say about when the "closed" removals should be released???  The thing with stuff on closure is when the clock began to tick- and when it ends.  100 years looks straightforward but as files can be 100 years from date of last ientry, then that can put a block on release for decades. My suspicious mind looks at this weeding process date-1965-and that this suggests we are a long way off this stuff being available-but perhaps another go at TNA and MOD on Adjutant General insttead.

    The "former reference" given is WO 95/2016 throws up several entries  on Discovery of war diaries at the higher levels being transferred.

Edited 29 September , 2020 by Guest

[TEW]

WO154/58 is available just not digitised yet. There are many diary extracts in this series which is titled 'War Office: War Diaries (Supplementary)'. Originally closed for 75 years which I guess expired mid 1990s. Although accessible prior to that on signing an undertaking not to disclose information.

 

No idea on the history of WO154 IE. when sensitive information started to be weeded out of WO95,  yours dated 1965.

 

I can't see TNA now putting them back in their WO95 locations. One day they might get digitised.

 

Sorry, hit the submit button before I finished.

TEW

Edited 29 September , 2020 by TEW

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, TEW said:

One day they might get digitised.

 

    But this is an increasing problem- does the stuff removed really get released?  Or does it go in the bin 5 minutes after removal?  The question of stuff not being found again crops up over and over again. I'm still waiting for the stuff on the Lansdowne peace offer of 1917-known to have been taken out of the Cabinet records.

 

 

[TEW]

Well, I don't know when the diaries were handed to present day TNA. I assume the WO had them for sometime and wouldn't be surprised if they weeded and binned material before the hand over. Can't see that the WO had the need to separate diaries into viewable and restricted as I don't think Joe Public could walk in just for a browse anyway.

 

I don't see why current day TNA would have information in WO154 that would cause such a bombshell that further weeding and binning is needed before release to the public. They are now public documents that have been released and accessed many times, no earthshattering secrets revealed.

 

May not be the same for your Lansdowne material of course.

TEW

[stiletto_33853]

Mike & TEW,

 

I will go through the material that this has arisen before. I note a lot of the war diaries were there is a note of a SAD has been cut out of the page entirely, leaving the remnants of the page intact.

It is not the SAD details that I am looking for but the details in the diary itself. The A & Q diaries do turn up little gems now and again. This A&Q diary contains very few pages of Appendix, usually just the months diary itself, making the diary virtually useless for my purposes as it is the Appendix I am after, strengths, moves, casualties etc. This A&Q covers 1 file only of 236 pages, usually they cover a lot more detail.

Had the same experience in that it is not downloadable. This to my mind makes a nonsense of being able to download a diary if it is not complete, or complete to the extent that the archives have the material but have not scanned it and will cause an absolute nightmare trying to insert them at a later date.

Question is, have the NA even bothered looking at WO154/58 to find out if there removal is now still justified?

Agreed, come across several cases of SAD in battalion diaries, what the case was, who carried out the sentence etc.

 

Andy

Edited 29 September , 2020 by stiletto_33853

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, stiletto_33853 said:

Question is, have the NA even bothered looking at WO154/58 to find out if there removal is now still justified?

 

   Shall we ask them?

[stiletto_33853]

I had put a tag for David in the title hoping that David Underdown would pick up on it. Guess he has not seen it, hence I will drop him a message to draw his attention to it.

 

There appears to be no consistency regarding the removal of SAD cases, i.e. see attachment from the 1st Army A & Q, and yet in other diaries there are huge chunks missing for the reason given in post 1, defies any logic whatsoever. I do think that these diaries should be put back together again, and before the scanning process started would have been the time.

 

Andy 

[David_Underdown]

Practice has varied over the years - wholesale extractions to a separate series would be unlikely now, for paper records a closed redacted item would probably be created and reinserted into the parent piece on the expiry of the closure, or possibly the whole original would initially be retained by the original department with the parts that could be opened copied and transferred (processes for born digital materials are a whole other ball game). However, once material has been separated into a different series altogether, trying to reinsert it into the original series is somewhat problematic as it may well have been cited by people under the other reference. It would make it a lot harder for such citations to be verified if the material were reunited.

 

Certainly now closure (due to the application of exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act) and retentions each have to be approved by the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/our-role/advisory-council/ (this was introduced as the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Council, chaired by the Master of the Rolls in the Public Record Act 1958). These are only for limited periods and have to be reviewed and reapproved if the department wishes to extend them.

 

Given the size of the series inconsistencies are almost inevitable, the review would of course have been entirely manual.

[stiletto_33853]

Thank you for your reply David. It would appear then that due to different practices over the years this, excuse my language, mess has occurred. The citing of parts of this separate series surely could be dealt with fairly easily from the department this series of papers is now lodged with.

Presently then, we are faced with a whole series of documents, originally belonging to one diary, being unavailable to view for people that live some distance from Kew. This surely is not a desirable situation, and brings into question as to what material, that should be available, is not now available to the general public never mind the whole practice of scanning documents, not in their entirety, but by selected pieces. Somewhat farcical?? however I appreciate the work that might be involved to place them all together though.

If different practices over the years has partially resulted in this situation, how is scanning the diaries now not opening a whole can of worms regarding future research, or indeed the present scanning diaries with a decision later on to place the diaries on-line in their entirety. Say someone from say Scotland wanted to reference material that's is available but then finds the material is not available unless you personally visit, not exactly public records to my mind with the digitisation of these partial diaries. Never mind the potential angst with someone paying to download the diary only to find although the material required is not contained in the material downloaded.

Different practices once again, but taking a pair of scissors to a public document to remove any details is nothing short of vandalism of public documents.

 

Not aimed at you at all David as an employee, you have been good enough to explain the situation time after time.

 

 

Andy

Edited 30 September , 2020 by stiletto_33853

[stiletto_33853]

Mike, another series is in the 4th Division, WO95/1449, 1449 some extracts transferred to WO154/25 to 29. Attached some of the pages where the Court Martials have been cut out.

 

Andy

Edited 1 October , 2020 by stiletto_33853

[stiletto_33853]

[TEW]

I always thought the blue and red type margin marks were made by regimental official history writers circa 1920s. Whoever that was wasn't impressed with the extracting either but surely these extracts (marked weeded) were done by WO not with TNA scissors.

So did the WO create a confidential series out of the diaries long before WO95 & WO154 existed as TNA records?

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, TEW said:

So did the WO create a confidential series out of the diaries long before WO95 & WO154 existed as TNA records?

 This would mean that each item snipped would have to have a record kept of where it had come from. "In the bin" 2 minutes later seems the likely course.

 

With some specific examples, the only way forward would seem to be FOI on MOD citing these examples, in the same way as the PRO note posted by Andy will have to be used at Kew.

[stiletto_33853]

Valid point TEW, however we then have the ad hoc way these records have been weeded. There are records of Court Martial clearly shown in the records, take for example the 1st Army excerpt shown in post 8 yesterday. There are then the battalion records which in instances show the details down to what unit were detailed for the firing squad. I might be missing something (not unusual) but this all defies logic.

 

Certainly not trying to cause a stir, but it would appear that valuable resources have been expunged, or let's say isolated, due to men that have been pardoned. If there are no further questions regarding that diary then I would suggest they need to be put together to ensure continuity of future research, before other parts of the diary are placed in the bin, if that has not already happened.

 

There is no doubt that the NA do a good job however, I do question some matters and the method that has, or is, being implemented sometimes.

 

Andy

Edited 1 October , 2020 by stiletto_33853