Lists of personal diaries, letters, memoirs

The letters, diaries, memoirs etc listed below could be linked to specific military units, but each name needs to be researched to find out exactly which unit they were in at the time. Can you help? Pick a name or document below, and try to find their military records to show which battalion they were in.

Here are some resources on researching World War One records to get you started.

Individual items

These names need to be matched to individual units so they can be added to its page. If you can find out which battalions these men were in, and send in your links to have them added to the wiki. If you're working on someone's record, you can also edit the wiki to add a note saying so. Remove the name below once it's been added to a regiment or battalion page.

• With British Guns in Italy, by Hugh Dalton

• Arthur L. Linfoot

• Leonard Kilcoin

• Photostat copies of letters from John Alexander Raws and Robert Goldthorpe Raws, 1915-1916

• William Owen War Diary 1916-1917

• Bailey, Herbert Austin (Sapper, b 1873, d 1963)

• Bayley, Francis Wilton (Private), 1896-1974

• Thomas Fredrick (Fred) Littler

• Robert Lindsay Mackay

• A. W. Miller

• Harry Lamin

• War diary kept by Captain Neil Cantlie, RAMC, with the 6th Division at the Battle of the Somme, Sept - Oct 1916

• Typed letter from Captain Thomas H. Gibbon, RAMC, to his brother, re his service with the King's Own Scottish Borderers in France in the early weeks of the First World War

• Ely, Dinsmore, 1894-1918. 'Diary letters of Dinsmore Ely, edited by his father, Dr. James O. Ely'. Library of Congress via Internet Archive.

• David Lindsay

• Ralph Dorchel DOUGHTY

• Nursing Sister Helen L. Fowlds

• Private Papers of Lieutenant L H Riddell

• Private McGarrigle was a soldier with 7th Northumberland Fusiliers Observation Corps

• Letter from John Adams to his mother Mary Adams, 13 May 1916

• Letter from Lieutenant Richard Henry Perceval-Maxwell to his father, Colonel Robert David Perceval-Maxwell, 7 October, 1916

• Letter from Charles Hezlet to his mother, 26 September 1916

Collections of items

A list of letters about the First World War on The Letters of 1916 project site. You can also help transcribe letters at their site.

A list of memoirs and diaries at firstworldwar.com

Some diaries listed on the Western Front Association site

A massive list of 'Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences' compiled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L). Pick a name, find out which unit they were with, and add them to the battalion/regiment page!

Digitised Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) papers from the Wellcome Library From their blog post '(Re)Discovering the Great War', 'The Wellcome Library has digitized over 130,000 pages of correspondence, personal and field diaries and reports, photographs and memoirs associated with the allied medical services during World War I. Drawn from material presented to the Royal Army Medical Corps Museum and Archive (now the Army Medical Services Museum Trust), the collection covers virtually every sphere of operations including the Balkan Front, the Dardanelles, East Africa, India, Italy, Malta, Mesopotamia and the Middle East, Russia, and South West Africa, as well as the Western and British Home fronts.'

The Great War Archive contains memoirs, letters and diaries, each of which could be linked to an Allied battalion or regiment.

An archive of transcribed war diary (Kriegstagebuch), letters and blogs includes a list of diaries from Weltkrieg / The Great War

The Wartime Memories Project - The Great War 1914-1918 The Allied Army contains many personal accounts, mostly second-hand stories related by family members.

Australian personal narratives

The Australian War Memorial's Anzac Connections lists 188 (at the time of writing) 'Biographies including private records and diaries'

The State Library of NSW has a collection of WWI diaries and letters online. Can you link the authors to their battalion page?

A user list of Great War diaries, letters, reminiscences on Trove (not all diaries may be available online)

British personal narratives

Cymru 1914, The Welsh Experience of the First World War includes some diaries, photographs, letters and memoirs

Cymry'r Rhyfel Mawr / Welsh Voices of the Great War on People's Collection Wales

Welsh Voices of the Great War Online

Personal Diaries and letters of Officers and Other Ranks from the 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards

Canadian personal narratives

If you're interested in finding records for Canadian battalions, the Canadian Great War project has a form to search for War Diaries by unit.

New Zealand personal narratives

Personal Histories of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles (see also the sitemap).

Diaries listed in the National Library of New Zealand's WW100 digitisation project

Off at last the goodbye would have been too awful is a blog post featuring diaries discovered during digitisation at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

"It's just hell here now" is an Anzac Day post from the Alexander Turnbull Library that shows what can be learnt from individual diaries.

American personal narratives

Veterans History Project

Research in progress

Add notes or links here for diaries you need help researching, missing links from the sites above, etc.