1. Why use this guide?
This guide will help you to carry out a search at The National Archives, whether online or on site at our building in Kew, for the war diaries of military units from the First World War and the years immediately following. Although these unit diaries provide useful insights and information into the battles and events of the First World War, they are of little use if you are searching for a specific person. For help finding a specific First World War soldier or officer see the related guides listed on the right of this page or one of our Army research signposts.
2. Essential information
2.1 What is a war diary?
A war diary is a daily record of operations, intelligence reports and other events, kept for each battalion by an appointed junior officer. The First World War war diaries date from 1914 to 1922, covering the hostilities as well as some post-war operations, including the Army of Occupation. They are not personal diaries (try the Imperial War Museum for those). Many of them were scribbled hastily in pencil and use obscure abbreviations, whilst some are the second carbon copy of the original, so they may be difficult to read.
2.2 Who kept war diaries?
- British, Dominion, Indian and Colonial forces on active service
- Units in France, Flanders, Italy, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Salonika and Russia
- Units on home service in the United Kingdom
- The Royal Flying Corps
- Specialist units, such as military hospitals
2.3 What information do they contain?
Some diaries will record little more than daily losses and map references whilst others will be much more descriptive. It is unusual for diaries to mention the names of ordinary soldiers. A few contain details about awards of the Military Medal and the Meritorious Service Medal.
3. How to find a war diary
3.1 Use the online Catalogue to order the original documents
The principal records series for First World War diaries is WO 95. From the Catalogue search screen you can search this series using all or part of the regiment or unit name and battalion number (15, not 15th) as keywords. You may need to try a variant of the name, especially for diaries of smaller units, such as medical, engineer and service units, which can be difficult to find. For insights into variants try browsing WO 95 to see what kinds of terms are used. It may help to consult WO 95/5494 which contains a list of Royal Artillery, Army Service Corps, Machine Gun Corps and Medical Units, giving the Division, Corps or Army they fought with. If you can't find the diary you're looking for in WO 95, try a search in WO 154, a series containing information on Courts Martial extracted from WO 95. To view a diary you will, in most cases, have to order the original document and view it at The National Archives at Kew.
3.2 View a diary online
The National Archives has been digitising selected war diaries from the First World War. You can find these records in Discovery. Access is free onsite at The National Archives at Kew.
3.3 Other resources
Paper Catalogue
The paper version of the Catalogue for WO 95 in the reading rooms at The National Archives at Kew is accompanied by separate indexes which provide details of the allocation of battalions to fields of battle as well as their reallocation from one brigade or division to another.
Order of Battle of Divisions
Published in several volumes and available in the reading rooms at The National Archives at Kew, the Orders of Battle list month by month the location of each unit, and the Division or Army to which they were attached. They are arranged by Division (not by unit).
Dictionary of Military and Technological Abbreviations and Acronyms
The Dictionary of Military and Technological Abbreviations and Acronyms (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983) by Bernhard Pretz, copies of which are available in the reading rooms and the library at The National Archives at Kew, may prove very useful when trying to decipher the text in some war diaries.
4. Related sources and other archives
In most cases, one copy of a war diary was sent into the War Office, and it is these copies which are now in The National Archives. Other copies were kept by the unit, and may now be with the regimental records or in regimental museums.
Below are listed other National Archives records series which may contain military diaries of various kinds, as well as other documents detailing the operations and movements of army units.
| Source type | Catalogue reference |
|---|---|
| Correspondence and Papers of Military Headquarters | WO 158 |
| Miscellaneous Unregistered Papers | WO 161 |
| Intelligence Summaries | WO 157 |
| Campaign Maps | WO 153, WO 297, WO 298, WO 300, WO 301, WO 302, WO 303 |
| Gallipoli, Palestine, and Italian Campaigns: Photographs | WO 317, WO 319, WO 323 |
5. Further reading
The following recommended publications are available in The National Archives' Library. Where indicated a publication is also available to buy at The National Archives' Bookshop.
IFW Beckett, The First World War: the essential guide to sources in the UK National Archives (Public Record Office, 2002)
A Bevan, Tracing Your Ancestors in the The National Archives (The National Archives, 2006) - Available to buy
M Brown, The Imperial War Museum book of the First World War; a great conflict recalled in previously unpublished letters, diaries, documents and memoirs (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991)
Peter Chasseaud, Topography of Armageddon: a British trench map atlas of the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Mapbooks, 1991)
Douglas Haig, Douglas Haig: War diaries and letters, ed. Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005)
Alfred Chevallier Parker, The diaries of Parker Pasha, ed. HVF Winstone (Quartet Books, 1983)
William Spencer, First World War Army Service Records (The National Archives, 2008) - Available to buy
Robert Alan Watson, War Diaries of John Alan Watson RGA: 13th Siege Battery April 1915 - October 1915, 76th Siege Battery April 1916 - December 1916 (1994)
