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Description: | Pages of an original ms diary (29pp) with brief entries for February - September 1916, together with a ts transcription with expanded entries (77pp written between 1918 and 1919) covering the period March 1916 - February 1918, and his service as an Officer with 1st Battalion Royal Irish Rifles (25th Brigade, 8th Division) on the Western Front, mainly in the Somme and Hohenzohen sectors, the Loos Salient and Ypres Salient, with detailed descriptions of the preparations for the Battle of the Somme and of the two major attacks made by the Battalion during the first weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) (1917), as well as the ill effect on the Battalion of the regular changes in command. Interspersed with the diary notes are expanded accounts of Third Ypres with his recollections, details of casualties, meeting Field Marshal Haig, as well as ts transcriptions of Orders by the commanders of 25th Brigade and 8th Division thanking the men following the battle. Together with annotated maps of the battlefields taken from newspapers, a portrait photograph of Whitfield (1918), brief details of his service with the RFC and RAF from February 1918 and as a prisoner of war after being shot down, and a ts report (6pp) written by Whitfield covering the period he was Commander of Dunkirk Area as AAG GHQ (May 1940), with critical comments on the attitude of the French authorities and the behaviour of certain units of the BEF prior to the evacuations.
Cataloguer SJO | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | Royal Irish Rifles 1st Battalion British Army 8th Division 25th Brigade | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Whitfield, Gerald Herbert Penn | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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