War Diaries Talk

Tagging Battalions in a Brigade Headquarters Diary

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I started working on a diary from the 12th Inf. Brigade Headquarters. Not surprisingly, many of the events recorded refer to one of the four battalions in the brigade. Do these get tagged? If so, would I use Unit Activity or Army Life for the applicable activities? Or would they get tagged as Other Unit? Or should I just focus on the activities of the Headquarters staff itself?

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Hi

    We don't have an answer for this at the moment and it's one reason why the HQ diaries were not supposed to be made live for tagging until it had been further discussed... Sorry, this is not very helpful but any answer I gave you now would only be my opinion and not "official"

    You seem to have summed up the issue very well so I would be interested to hear what you and others who have tagged Brigade or Divisional HQ Diaries think we SHOULD do.

    Heather

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    As Heather said, we didn't mean to release the HQ diaries yet. That was an error on our part - apologies. We've removed them from the tagging queue now, although the work you've already done on them has been saved and will form part of the data we collect for them.

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I've been looking for this thread! I'm so glad you're revamping the talk pages.

    I've had some thoughts about tagging brigade or divisional headquarters units that I wanted to post, the main one being that it may be possible to glean more information about a given battalion's activities through the brigade diary in cases where the battalion adjutant is very terse. I've come across some diaries where the page is filled with "Situation as usual" or "Nothing of importance to report" and I can't help thinking that several hundred men must have been doing SOMETHING on most of those days. Other diaries seem to focus on unit movements but scarcely mention things like patrols or football games or men getting a chance for a bath. Maybe those things would be included in a brigade diary and could somehow be tagged or hashtagged to flesh out a battalion diary's report.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Excellent point and that's part of the reason we wanted to delay the release of the HQ diaries until we had the right tags to deal with them. As you say, along with their own set of info, they'll be a rich resource for tying together the Battalion diaries and filling in any gaps there might be.

    I hope the forum reorganisation works for you (when it's finished).

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  • Jan_Greenslade by Jan_Greenslade in response to ral104's comment.

    I'm afraid I did not see these comments until after I'd taken up 2 Cavalry Division: 5th Brigade: Headquarters a couple of days ago. I have only completed a few pages and was about to log a question similar to cgastwein's of May 21 2015. Since all these comments are almost 18 months old I was wondering whether a decision had been made about tagging these diaries or should I leave this one and select another individual Unit? Thank you Jan

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Jan, There's a new thread about the recently released headquarters diaries called New Diaries. They've decided to pull them all again because we're still lacking appropriate tags.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Sorry for the confusion, Jan. The HQ diaries were put back in the tagging queue by mistake, but have now been taken down again. The tags you placed haven't been lost, though - they're all saved and will be a really useful starting point for when we're in a position to properly tackle the HQ diaries.

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  • Jan_Greenslade by Jan_Greenslade in response to ral104's comment.

    Thank you, I look forward to tagging these although I think I'll need a little guidance beforehand - Jan

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  • f0rbe5 by f0rbe5

    I've just opened the 35th Bde Royal Artillery's diary, which brings me to the same problems as described above. Is there any new guidance? I've read the New Diaries thread mentioned above, but there doesn't seem to be a conclusion about whether new tags are required or not. I'm going to fudge along for the time being, but would like to know if there's more guidance out there - or forthcoming... Iain

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    That shouldn't be an HQ diary, Iain. An artillery brigade is at the same sort of functional level as an infantry battalion. You'll find an HQ unit, plus several batteries. This is a useful link for further info: http://www.1914-1918.net/whatartbrig.htm

    Hope that helps.

    Rob

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  • f0rbe5 by f0rbe5

    Rob, what I'm concerned about is how to report the individual batteries, which are extensively reported on in the diary - there's actually virtually nothing at all about the Bde itself. Iain

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    That's typical of artillery diaries, I'm afraid. It's best to tag all the activities and locations. So on any given day, the data might show that the brigade was in four different places doing four different things. And in effect it was. It might actually be quite interesting to look at the geographical dispersal of artillery brigades, when I think about it, and tagging everything that happens will certainly allow us to do that.

    Rob

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    It may also be useful to just not worry about where each battery is and what they are doing. In other words, as Rob says, just tag the locations and activities, without trying to tag the individual batteries.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Yes, sorry...I wasn't clear before. You can't link a tag to individual batteries - there's just no way to do it with the current tag set. But that's okay. Just tag what they all do and we'll end up with a set of information on the brigade as a whole.

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