OTC Year Book and Diary - Does anyone have these for the years 1915, 1916, 1918 and 1919?

[Charles Fair]

Hello all, I am looking for copies of this pocket diary sized book that was produced for officers and cadets in OTCs, both Junior and Senior Divisions. It was edited by an officer in the Nottingham University College OTC.

 

I have a copy of the 1917 edition which was published in late 1916. It contains the diary for 1917 over 52 weekly spreads, but has a couple of hundred other pages which are full of useful information for cadets to know (e.g. duties of a sentry etc.). This was the 5th edition of the diary.  

 

It has useful statistics on all 167 Junior OTC contingents including headcount as of 1/11/16, attendance at summer camp in 1916, and commissions between August 1915 and Sept 1916 split by Regular/SR/TF/NA.  I would love to see what statistics are reported in other editions.

 

I will post some pictures in due course.

[Guest]

A picture of the titlepage would help considerably.  And details of any editor, -also any details of printer (may be verso title-back of the titlepage-or at the very end)

[Guest]

 There is a copy of the first issue (?) in the library of the Imperial War Museum

 

THE OFFICERS' TRAINING CORPS YEAR BOOK AND DIARY, 1913

Includes some hand-written entries

Object description

Includes index

Category Books

Related period  Pre-1914 (content), Pre-1914 (content)

Creator  STEERS, H. DOUGLAS (Author)
Forster Groom (Publisher)

Production date  1913

Place made London

Dimensions  whole: Dimensions: 13cm., Pagination: 217p. ill., maps

Catalogue number LBY 38374

 

   and a set of the beasties  at Bodley in Oxford      (Search the Oxford catalogue under name of editor- Douglas Steers)

 

 

   There is a similar run at Cambridge University Library- again lacking an issue for 1916?

[Although there is an issue from 1916 listed as being at the US Army Heritage and Education Center:

Edited 16 March , 2021 by Guest

[Charles Fair]

Hello

Thank you for looking at the archival holdings. Other than looking on archive.org that is something I had not done given the current impossibility of getting into an archive. I will try the Bodleian or Cambridge UL if circumstances permit. Suspect that will be a long way off.  

Meanwhile, should anyone be interested in these and/or have one in their own holdings, here is the cover and title pages of the 1917 edition.

 

[Charles Fair]

Here are the contents pages for the 1917 edition. Chapter VII is the one that interests me most.

Edited 16 March , 2021 by Charles Fair

[Charles Fair]

Please see the image below for an example of the data in that chapter. Having finished plugging the numbers in to my master spreadsheet of Junior OTC contingents I have a few stats

 

167 junior division OTCs were listed.  All bar 13 gave the strength of the contingent (of which one was Elstow School in Beds which closed in April1916).  Total strength for those recorded is: 25,596, so probably in the order of 27,000 in total if the 12 missing contingents were included.  (Clearly far below the Army's needs for junior officers if, say 1/4 left school each year.)

 

71 contingents gave the numbers attending annual camp in the summer of 1916. A total of 6,246 attended camp. It's not clear whether the others did not have a camp or did not report, but many schools (e.g. Oundle and Lancing) did not hold camps in 1916.

 

109 schools gave an indication of how many officers were commissioned for the 13 months between 4/8/15 and 4/9/16. These presumably include boys who had left school sometime before and not in the year.  Most gave a breakdown by Regular/SR/TF/NA of which the proportions are:

 

18% regular

15% Special Reserve

23% TF

45% New Army

 

Hence my interest in obtaining data from other editions of this yearbook!

Edited 16 March , 2021 by Charles Fair