Copies of War Diaries from TNA

[Keith Sherwood]

Suey,
Feel free to butt in as much as you like on my threads!  I was wondering about that too - have never seen a war diary myself - so perhaps Themonsstar can tell us about the carbonising thing when next he comes on here...
keith
and Eek! indeed.  Must decide on some kind of limit on how much I'd be willing to have copied and therefore pay for.

[Bill749]

Hi Keith

Eek indeed! At that rate, you could take a trip to Kew AND buy a digital camera!

It is very straightforward to access the archives and, with a reasonable digital camera, you can photograph as many pages as you like at no cost.  You can even order up the material you want on the website before you go, so it is waiting for you when you arrive.

If you've not been there before you can pre-register on line and just go to reception to collect your card on arrival.

Regards, Bill

[Keith Sherwood]

Thanks for this advice, Bill,
Might be a far better idea, as you suggest, to pop along to Kew and have a look for myself, armed with digital camera.  Anyway, it'll be extremely interesting to see what the hypothetical cost of copying and sending might be...
keith

[themonsstar]

Hi
I do not have anythin to the 8th Batt RB, but if you pm Andy Pay on here hes your man for the RB, & I'm sure he will help you out.

As for Carbonised, (carbon copy) thy were written like this then the duplicates sent to various places,

If you were to asked the National Archives, to copy a full War Diaries, you would not get much change from £150-200.

I would go with Bill on the Didital Camera way, But make sore you have a good camera, with  4-5 million pix so you get a good clear pic.

[Keith Sherwood]

Themonsstar,
Thanks so much for having a good look for me.  I shall follow your advice re contacting Andy Pay, and shall wait and see how TNA cost the request...
Best wishes,
keith

[suey]

I did'nt know you could take a camera into the archives and do your own copying but found this in the 'visit us' section on their website. You learn something new everyday!

Digital camera
Digital cameras may be used to take photographs of some documents. You will have to register your camera with us. Please ask for further details at the record copying desk.

Thanks for the explanation about carbonised copies.

[frenchdressing]

Hi all,
I received a newsletter last week from the National Archives saying that they had copies of war diaries online.
I looked for the one for the 5th Manchester Regiment in Gallipoli for July 1915. For £3.50 I downloaded the pages for July and looked for the day of the 12th. There were few casualties that day, 2 killed, 5 wounded and my grandad was one of the two killed.
Now, I'm wondering why, if there were so few casualties, what happened to my grandad as he has no known grave. This means I suppose that there wasn't a body found to bury.
The notes in the diary are very short and to the point as is to be expected.
Regards,
Pat

[djcrtoye]

I've got a war diary of the Scots Guards, the reason I wanted them was to find out my wifes g.uncle who died in 1916.  I downloaded them and found they were worth the £3.50.  Also it  gave the number of dead on the same day he died but found out later there was more than what was in the diary.

[Keith Sherwood]

Right,
It's taken TNA just 6 days to come up with an estimate for that SRK GURNER war diary, but the message they've sent has arrived in my junk mail folder, and whenever there are blue-lit links in there it's never possible to click on them and go straight to the link specified.
I find TNA website a minefield to navigate, have an ID number, and a great long link that somehow doesn't want to open up to exactly where I want to go.
Can anyone help me, as it's all very frustrating, in words of not much more than one syllable, please...
keith