New Diaries
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Just wondering if there are any more new diaries coming through to tag.
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by
cyngast
moderator
We are hoping to get some this week. Rob has been in touch with the people at Zooniverse about it, but they seem to be very busy launching a lot of new projects in the past two weeks.
I see you are tagging that 4th Bde. Royal Horse Artillery diary and thought I would tell you that we already know about the large number of pages that are out of order. So there's no need to mark each page with the out of order hashtag, if you get tired of doing it.
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Cynthia, Thanks for your reply. I had to leave the 4th Bde RHA diary earlier because of problems with it, as reported. I have now gone back to resume tagging it and note your remarks.
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by
cyngast
moderator
We've got a bit of an update from the Zooniverse people and it looks like we likely won't have new diaries up until the week of the 19th.
It's frustrating, I know. I'm just as eager to dig in to fresh diaries as anyone. Fortunately, we still have eight, at least at the moment, to get us through.
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Thanks for that message Cynthia, it will be interesting to see what they are when they appear. Although its good to see the ongoing diaries nearly finished.
Did something I had not done before, signed in to read the talk page hours ago and closed down and forgot to sign out from the war diaries.
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by
cyngast
moderator
I don't know what we will be getting. Rob and his contact at the National Archives made that decision. So it will be a surprise for me, too.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
The next batch will just be a random assortment of diaries we'd from one of the original digitisation uploads - we'll get a good assortment of different unit types.
For the upload after that, we're hoping to get hold of the diaries for the 31st Division, which along with all the support units was made up of a lot of New Army units - the famous Pals battalions.
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Thanks for that information Ral, here is the History of the 31st Division including the order of battle of the 31st Division. I think there will be some interesting diaries from this Division if, as you hope, they do come up later, after the random assortment of diaries you mentioned.
Link: http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/order-of-battle-of-divisions/31st-division/
Also 1 July 1916. At the Somme, the division was assigned to capture Serre on the flank of the main assault and guard against counter-attacks; however, the attacking battalions were decimated by German machine-guns before crossing no-man's land, with only small groups surviving to reach the far trenches. Some small parties reached their objectives, including one group inside Selle itself, but they had no support from reserves and were destroyed.
The division lost 3593 officers and men killed, wounded, or missing, with only eight men from the attacking waves surviving to be taken as prisoners of war. Some battalions had a casualty rate of over 80% The division did not see further heavy fighting, other than routine trench garrisons, until November, when it fought at the Battle of the Ancre. In the spring of 1917 it fought under Wanless-O'Gowan's command with more success at the Battle of Arras. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wanless_O'Gowan
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Looking forward to a batch of new diaries coming up maybe the week of the 19th.
The only diary left for me to tag now is the 409 Field Coy RE which is at 88%. I have tagged all the others.
Brought up a page to tag - 409 Field Coy RE - which is 1-2 Nov 1918 and found an interesting article regarding their operations on Regiment at Lock No 1, Bois de l'Abbaye: 4th November 1918, where they assisted the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment.
I have posted this interesting article.
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by
deehar
in response to marie.eklidvirginmedia.com's comment.
You are close behind me! Where did you post the article? The taking of the lock you mentioned (on Nov 4th) is scarcely covered in the diary although the 409th took 45% casualties and the CO won the VC. Unfortunately Major Findlay's report in Appendix A is very difficult to read.
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Message for deehar
Here are the links regarding the Canal lock. Lock No 1, Bois de l'Abbaye: 4th November 1918. I posted them on the Mess Hall Board / First World War Jargon: Here is the message which I didn't mention where I had posted it:-
“...Page 376 of the Diary of the 409 Field Company RE is very faint. (Appendix A – Part 3b Crossing of stream West of Canal. Link for page: (profile page 377) https://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD0003lw8
I have found 2 interesting links to this page which mention the 409 Field Company RE which may be of interest to those tagging this diary page : Link: http://battlefields1418.50megs.com/lock_1.htm Also Link: http://www.tunnellers.net/1atc/sambre_canal.pdf ...”
You can read my comments re this page on link; https://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD0003lw8
you may have to unload more to read the other comments. It took me ages to read and understand it. 😃Posted
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
A quick update on the new batch of diaries: I'm chasing this up with Zooniverse and am hopeful that they will be able to refresh the database soon. Apologies to those of you who are running out of things to tag.
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Awaiting arrival of new diaries to tag - The ones that are left for tagging I have tagged them all. Will patiently await some new ones. In the meantime will keep up with talk pages 😃
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
There does finally seem to be some activity on this front, so keep your fingers crossed. With any luck, we'll see the new diaries tomorrow...although be prepared for it to take a little longer.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
Okay, there are some technical difficulties at the Zooniverse end which are holding this up, I'm afraid. It's unlikely we'll see any new diaries before the start of next week now - sorry for the frustration!
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by
josiepegg
there is a project to index WW1 crew lists that might be of interest while we wait for new diaries. For information contact crewlist@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk
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by
deehar
in response to marie.eklidvirginmedia.com's comment.
Many thanks!
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Thanks for that information Josie regarding crew lists. I had gone back to tagging the ANZAC Project. Will see what that project is regarding crew lists.
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by
cyngast
moderator
in response to josiepegg's comment.
Josie, The link you put up doesn't work, so here is one that goes to the National Archives announcement of the project: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/new-project-to-launch-with-the-national-maritime-museum-and-the-crew-list-index-project/
Thanks for bringing our attention to it!
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Cynthia, the link Josie gave led me to the link concerning the tagging of crew lists - You have to send them an e mail regarding this project - see link: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/new-project-to-launch-with-the-national-maritime-museum-and-the-crew-list-index-project/
The same link you have quoted.
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by
cyngast
moderator
in response to marie.eklidvirginmedia.com's comment.
How odd that it doesn't work for me. All I get is a server not found message.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
Keep watching this space - it looks like we ought to start seeing new diaries in the queue in the next few hours. Fingers crossed!
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Thanks for the update regarding diaries Ral, that is a bit of good news :}
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by
cyngast
moderator
They're here!
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See there are plenty of new diaries to choose from now.
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by
cyngast
moderator
In looking through them, they seem a good mix of different types of units: infantry battalions, machine gun companies, a few field ambulances and machine gun companies.
For our newer volunteers, I would suggest that the infantry battalions may be the easiest to understand and to tag, as the tags were designed primarily to fit the infantry units. That is, of course, just my suggestion.
I notice that the unit titles do not include their division. If you want to know the division, an easy way to find it is to go The Long, Long Trail website http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/ and search for the unit.
Do be sure to ask if you have any questions!
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There are a couple of diaries that I tagged over 2 years ago - different parts of the years. I still have my notebooks for them, so nice to go back to them.
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by
cyngast
moderator
in response to marie.eklidvirginmedia.com's comment.
This batch, like the last one, seems to be primarily units belonging to the 1st through the 7th Divisions. So there may be some units we've had diaries for before, but these will be for different date ranges.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
You might notice an issue with the page numbers on the new batch of diaries. We'll get this fixed, but in the meantime it's fine to tag them as normal.
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I noticed that the page numbers are not on the bottom of the diary pages for the diary I am tagging. It appears from what you say Ral, that it is common to other diaries.
I checked my profile pages and the numbers appear on them - although I find sometimes they can be 1 number out of order.
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by
LinsladeLad
Reading through the "diaries" page, many of these new diaries have duplicated text in the title. Is it possible to get these edited to make them a little easier to read?
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by
cyngast
moderator
in response to LinsladeLad's comment.
I noticed right away that the titles are somewhat confusing to read. I don't know if they can be fixed, but given that it took weeks just to get them posted at all, I think that tweaking the titles may be asking too much.
We'll keep it in mind, though.
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by
20jhall
in response to cyngast's comment.
WIll you be including world war 2 diaries?
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by
cyngast
moderator
in response to 20jhall's comment.
No, this project is just about the World War 1 diaries of the units that were on the Western Front.
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by
20jhall
in response to cyngast's comment.
Maybe you could make that a new project.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
in response to 20jhall's comment.
The diaries from the Second World War haven't been digitised yet, as far as I know. Certainly that would be a good project for the future, but for now we have over 1.5 million Western Front diary pages to work through - there's plenty to keep us busy.
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Those diaries for WW2 would be a really big project and would include many theatres of war, and lots of allied relations etc. Nice to know there are lots more diaries to tag for WW1. Quite happy to continue with the WW1 diaries.
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by
141Dial34
in response to ral104's comment.
Merry Bah Humbug to all with me hoping for an influx of new dairies!
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
in response to 141Dial34's comment.
I wouldn't hold your breath for this happening before Christmas, although we are working on it. When we do get an new upload, I'm hoping they'll be from the 31st Division, which will include quite a few Pals diaries.
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by
deehar
in response to ral104's comment.
Is there any chance of seeing an End-of-Year status report - diaries completed and still to go? Or is that available elsewhere?
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
in response to deehar's comment.
Sure, I'll try and pull something together about the work we've done this year. Feel free to prod me if nothing's materialised over the next couple of days.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
in response to deehar's comment.
I haven't forgotten about this - just trying to get hold of some stats which break down activity by year. Keep an eye out - I hope to get something up over the next few days.
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by
deehar
in response to ral104's comment.
😃
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The batch of diaries lately have been very interesting to tag. Just wonder what Brigades/Regiments etc, the next batch of diaries to come through will cover, although there are still a few more to be tagged at the moment.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
I've gone for a more random selection with the next batch, Marie, rather than all the units from one division. I'm not sure when we'll see them in the tagging queue as there's some liaison required between staff at the National Archives and Zooniverse.
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