War Diaries Talk

Placing significant events into context.

  • peterr1006 by peterr1006

    In early March 1916 'my' Regimental Diary (3 Div 8 Battalion King's Own Royal Lancaster) gives information about huge casualties suffered during their current engagement - 338 casualties from a total strength of 814. What is the best way to look at the 'Big Picture' and use hindsight in order to place this event into a context within the war as it was progressing at the time?

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  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

    I'm not a historian at all, but here are my random thoughts:

    Some events have their own web pages eg. Bellewaarde Wood, near Ypres, in June 1915: http://www.bellewaarde1915.co.uk/

    Larger actions have Wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres

    I think it would be interesting to add links to the larger context of an action as comments on the page. That would share them with the next person who classifies the page, if they look at the comments.

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  • David_Underdown by David_Underdown moderator

    Once again, the Long, Long Trail website is quite a good place to start the Battles pages linked from http://www.1914-1918.net/greatwar.html give a useful overview. In this case it was probably the fighting around the Bluff in the Ypres Salient http://www.1914-1918.net/bat14.htm#bluff

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  • peterr1006 by peterr1006 in response to eatyourgreens's comment.

    Many thanks for your advice which has been useful in placing "my" Regiment's activities into context.

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