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In their own words: linking lived experiences of the First World War

The Centenary of the outbreak of the First World War has lead to an increased interest in the lives of soldiers and others in WWI. However, it can be difficult for novice researchers to find their way through military jargon and structures and to get a sense of what life in the Great War was like for a particular person at a particular time - where were they, and what did they experience? Sometimes rich personal accounts have survived, but in many cases, you only have a name, and perhaps a service number or regiment or battalion name.

This project aims provide context for an individual's experience of WWI by linking to narratives written by people in the same situation. At the end of this project, someone who wants to research a soldier in WWI but doesn't know a thing about how armies were structured should be able to find a personal account from someone who was in the same place at the same time that gives a sense of their lived experiences of WWI.

The challenge is to link these personal accounts by creating links from the individual who wrote them to their military unit. To populate this dataset, personal accounts (diaries, letters, etc) need to be linked to specific soldiers, who can then be linked to specific units. Linking published accounts such as official unit histories to pages would also help. Once these personal accounts are linked to particular military units, they can be linked to higher units - from the battalion, ship or regiment to brigade, corps, etc - and to particular places, activities, events and campaigns.

How you can help

In this phase of the project, the aim is find a personal narrative - a diary, letters, memoirs or images - for each military unit in the British Army. Populating the lists of battalions and linking the numerous personal and official diaries, letters, memoirs, etc already online is a huge task and it can only be done with your help. Help us share the soldiers' experiences of WWI in their own words by adding links to their diaries or letters to their battalion or regiment's page.

Anyone can sign up to this wiki (but not you, spam bots!) to help out. If you get stuck, just drop me a line; I'm @mia_out on twitter.

• There is an excellent page of Infantry Battalion War Diary Transcript Links (WW1) containing 'links to transcripts of First World War British Army infantry battalion war diaries from WO 95 which have already been published on other sites'. These official unit diaries should be added to the relevant battalion pages.

• Add to the lists of personal diaries, letters, memoirs already online

See Frequently asked questions and site help and How you can help for more information.

Project task list

• Populate list of military units to form the basis for the collecting process:
  • Australian battalions in World War I (done?)
  • British battalions and regiments in World War I (in progress; this includes Irish units)
  • Canadian battalions in World War I (done?)
  • Indian battalions in World War I
  • Italian battalions in World War I
  • New Zealand battalions in World War I (started)
• Collate lists of personal diaries, letters, memoirs that can be linked to units through their authors
• Collate lists of official unit diaries and histories
• Collate resources on researching World War One records to help researchers know where to start
• Create a sample battalion page as a demonstrator to show how personal accounts can be linked (e.g. 153rd (Wellington) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF))
• Collate information about private letters, diaries and memoirs
• Technical work including:
  • upgrade MediaWiki instance to get InfoBoxes working
  • short URLs
  • set up 'preloaded pages' to pre-populate headings on new pages, probably using Extension:CreateBox (done)
• Settle on workable version of page template for battalions [[1]]
• Settle on workable model for InfoBoxes for structured data about battalions/regiments

This project is part of a Transnational Research Fellowship with the CENDARI project at Trinity College Dublin's Long Room Hub. Further information is available on the 'about' page of this wiki.