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Description: | Ms memoir in 3 volumes (94pp, 94pp and 247pp), with an illustrated ts transcription (316pp), written in 1916 and recording his service as a subaltern with the 11th Battalion Middlesex Regiment (36th Brigade, 12th Division) in the United Kingdom, August 1914 - May 1915, and on the Western Front mainly in the Ypres and Loos sectors, June - November 1915, describing his enlistment as a Kitchener volunteer and the various stages of his training, his regimental duties as a young subaltern and the comradeship within his Battalion, invasion scares in England and war rumours, his recreational activities, the unit's embarkation to France and their first experience of trench life, his involvement in the Battle of Loos (September - October 1915) including the initial gas attack and the subsequent offensives against the Hohenzollern Redoubt (November 1915), his witnessing a court martial in progress, billets and relations with French civilians, the low value attached by the troops to intelligence reports, conditions in the front line trenches, and finally his wounding in the head from shell fragments (4 November 1915) and evacuation to the 39th Field Ambulance, then No 1 Casualty Clearing Station at Chocques and No 1 British Red Cross Hospital at Le Touquet, before returning to hospital in England. Also held with the collection are a file containing original ms letters, photographs, maps, menus, service records, newspaper cuttings and other items reproduced as photocopies in the above transcription; a published "Hints to Young Officers" pocketbook (61pp) written in 1908; and three outsize photographs of McDonald and his Battalion.
Cataloguer APR
Catalogue date 2001-06-05 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | McDonald, D | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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