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Description: | Ms diary (86pp) transcribed from the original, recalling his service with an unidentified Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment in France and Salonika, from January 1915 to March 1919, starting with his enlistment in January 1915 and consequent embarkation on the HMT ST PETERSBURG from Southampton to France, describing his first impressions of the trenches, the fighting he later witnessed at Passchendaele Ridge and how his early enthusiasms for the war were quickly dampened after experiencing the realities of the Western Front, also detailing his journey on the HMT TRANSLYVANIA to Egypt and his passage through Alexandria on 9 November 1915, before proceeding on the HMT HORRATO arriving in Salonika on 1 December 1915 where he continues to outline his movements and duties; including the unending arduousness of digging trenches, his Christmas celebrations, his contracting Malaria in June 1916, the conditions and treatment he received whilst in hospital, his rejoining the regiment in September 1916 where he became part of the Machine Gun Corps and his later transfer to an RFC Squadron where he was a clerk and then a waiter at the beginning of 1918, as well as commenting rather scathingly throughout on the poor treatment and conditions endured by ordinary soldiers like himself, the incompetence of the authorities who he refers to as 'brass hats' and the suffocating presence of red tape, finally noting the Bulgarian retreat in September 1918 and their subsequent surrender in October 1918, how he spent his leave in London in November 1918 and ending with his brief return to Salonika, from December 1918 to February 1919.
Cataloguer CLS
Catalogue date 2007-10-09 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Sutton, S H | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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