Maybe some of the Artillery experts on this site may be able to help me with this one. I've been to Kew a few months back and got the 64th regiments diary out, but it only contains administrative details, and nothing on the 255 and 256th Bty. Did the batteries in a regiment keep diaries? Or is there any other source I should be looking up? Histories and the like. I seem to have reached a dead end on this one.
Hi Adam, Some batteries do have diaries held at Kew-Compared to their opposites in the Infantry there are quite a lot. Andy
Yes I have several WD's in which not only the Regimental WDs are mention, but also each Battery in the Regiment
Adam, Have a look through the Excel Spreadsheets I uploaded on the files at Kew. It should be an easier way to confirm if they exsist. Cheers Andy
Unfortunately not all Regiments did keep individual battery diaries. I found one for 255 AT Battery from 1940. WO166/1696 - 1940 Mar.-May, Aug.-Nov. and one for 256 AT Battery from 1940 WO166/1697 - 1940 Mar.-Nov Nothing came up for the rest of the war years.
Thats really dissapointing, thanks for helping me out though. I'll see if anything exists in the realms of books, IWM accounts, but I'm not hopeful.
I'm not a RA expert but from what I've found in the 1940 side of things. In the main they only seem to have battery diaries when they were working independently from the rest of the regiment.
I'm not a RA expert but from what I've found in the 1940 side of things. In the main they only seem to have battery diaries when they were working independently from the rest of the regiment. Correct young man. Pain in the a--- trying to find Bty diaries, thankfully there's not to many of them. Rob
Correct young man. Pain in the a--- trying to find Bty diaries, thankfully there's not to many of them. Rob They are all listed in the Excel Spreadsheets Andrea did for me by campaign. They are in the research section of the forum mate.
Typically, if a Regiment was operating as a whole, then the WD was kept centrally, Bty's did not keep there own, however, if a Bty operated independantly then it would maintain its own WD for that period. Hence the seeming inconsistency of Bty/Regt WD's. Phil
Again thanks for the effort guys, alos those excel war diaries are really useful!.... even if they don't have what I'm after. This is yet another sorry tale of the annoying war diary phenomena, these Btys were involved in one of the fiercest battles of the war, certainly one of the most famous engagements in Tunisia. And they detail only for that day that the officer in command swapped with another regiment. Compare this to some diaries which have photo's, maps etc and its hard to take when youve been so excited about getting them, but then they weren't written to please me, they had bigger fish to fry
That would probably account for the lack of any detail about the batteries in Brig Routledge's 'History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, 1914-55' So nothing there either.
I have a bit of an update on this subject: I copied a North African Campaign Artillery Regiment diary this week and it also contained a diary for one of the Regt's batteries so there is always hope the batteries maybe with the regiments diary. A
Hi Drew, thanks for keeping me in mind. I have the Regimental diary, and unfortunately it doesn't have anything in it at all. I'm starting to think that the timing is also a factor in this, in late 1942 a lot of regiments, Bns etc seem to have hand written diaries, or very poorly kept ones. But suddenly in 1943 (when they started getting typewritter ribbons shipped over I guess) they suddenly become much better organized, typed up properly... and they start using war diary coordinates properly as well (end of 42, start of 43 you see a lot of 4 digits, then as time progresses, 6 digits come in, presumably as the maps are better distibuted. I hardly saw any cordinates at all in Nov early Dec). Another example is standardized war diary sheets, a lot of infantry Bns didnt use them to start with, and just used their own infurtiatingly random formatting on standard issue MOD ww2 poor quality paper. I guess war diary best-practice in the field took a little while to drum into some of the units how important it was for war diaries to be sent home and copies retained... I get the feeling writing them out was looked on quite poorly before this.
I'm of the opinion any that are typed are done post event. I can't imagine anyone fighting a battle and typing at the same time. There's quite a few clues to this being the case in the 1940 diaries I collect.
I'm of the opinion any that are typed are done post event. I can't imagine anyone fighting a battle and typing at the same time. There's quite a few clues to this being the case in the 1940 diaries I collect. I'll agree with that, I know that a few were sent back and typed up. However I do have accounts of adjutants and their assistants typing the war diaries on site in the command post (Sometimes you can see the quality in typing change when they get a new officer). I guess it depends on how much they had going on at the time.
Indeed and how much the chap doing it was bothered. I did quite a few entries in my units war diary in Iraq and I always remember my troop commander saying put as much detail in as you can and get as many names mentioned as you can-One day someone maybe looking for family members in it-Little did I know in 2003 that war diaries exsisted and their purpose.
