Calling members in Australia - especially anyone in Canberra

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

If any member lives in, or visits, Canberra, or, even better, routinely visits the Australian War Memorial Library, I wonder if they might be persuaded to take a short time out of their day to look at a document that is held there.

This is a link to the document in question: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB39879

The reason why I’m interested is a thread which I started on this forum: https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/293484-tifevisit-ideiesmo-ideepaw-ideisabate-ideentrans-ideenland-ideljack-idiercat-ideenreng-codes-in-2brc-wd/

You don’t need to read the whole thing, but essentially the background is that in February 1917 No 2 British Red Cross Hospital started to use codewords in its War Diary when talking about men in its care. We believe that these codewords are in fact official government codes that came into use at about that time, or shortly before, for the purposes of sending telegrams to the War Office, or from one department of the War Office to another, inter alia so that information on the condition of wounded men could be transmitted on to the relatives.

We know that in 1916 a revised list of government telegraphic codes was produced, which would almost certainly have been pretty comprehensive, and would have dealt with much more than news about wounded men (e.g. matters relating to trade and industry etc.), but very probably would have included these new medical codewords. However, we have been unable to find a copy of the 1916 list in Britain, probably as a result of the destruction of records in WW2.

We have been able to work out – roughly – what most of the codewords mean, but it would be nice to have definitive translations.

It is possible that the document in the Australian War Memorial Library to which I have referred above is a copy of the 1916 revised list of government codes, and thus contains the complete answer to the queries raised in the above thread.

We know that there was a similar, but much more exhaustive, set of codes in use in WW2, as set out on this link: http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/general-procedure-for-dealing-with-casualties-in-war-1939.60053/page-2#post-69453 .

I confess that I don’t know how easy it would be to find one’s way around the 1916 document, but at least it seems to be only 158 pages. I hope that the codewords would be grouped into different subject matters, and that there might be a section headed “Casualty Phrases” or similar.

Can anyone help with this?

Tricia

[WhiteStarLine]

Yes, no problem, PM me at your leisure.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

That's brilliant! I don't know why I didn't think of making this appeal before!