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Description: | A collection of 410 ms letters (18 with ts transcripts), 9 ts letters and 2 postcards covering his unpaid and unrecorded service with the newly raised 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment at Tidworth, Wiltshire (September - October 1914), his training as a subaltern in the 7th Battalion King's Shropshire Light Infantry (25th Division) in Wiltshire and Hampshire (October 1914 - August 1915), his service - latterly as a company commander - with the Battalion (now 3rd Division) on the Western Front, mostly in the Ypres Salient (September 1915 - July 1916); his service as a company commander with the 1st Battalion KSLI in India at Poona (March 1925 - October 1926), Dinapore and Muzaffapore (December 1926 - April 1928), Razmak (November 1928 - September 1929), Rawalpindi and Kuldana (November 1931 - February 1934) including a private visit to the Far East and Japan in 1933 and Delhi (February - April 1934); his service with the 2nd Battalion KSLI in the UK (July 1936 - September 1938); in command of a detachment of the 2nd KSLI on garrison duty in Bermuda (February 1939 - June 1940); and with the Battalion, as its commanding officer from February 1941, guarding the oil refineries in Curacao, Netherlands West Indies (June 1940 - February 1942) and during the journey back to the UK via the United States (February - March 1942). The letters reflect some of the frustrations and ennui of regimental life between the wars and his diminishing enthusiasm for soldiering even after 1939 and they also include many expressions of opinion, usually unfavourable, about the inhabitants of the countries in which he was stationed. With the letters are 3 exercise books containing the drafts (159 and 144pp) and final ms (173pp) of a memoir, written in 1917-18, describing his service in France and Belgium in the First World War and usefully supplementing the information in his 1915-16 letters about conditions in and out of the trenches as well as giving a full account of the 7th KSLI's attack on the Somme on 14 July at the outset of the Battle of Bazentin Ridge in which he was seriously wounded; and also a small number of related documents, maps, presscuttings and photographs including a ms letter (2pp) written in April 1916 by the GOC 3rd Division Major-General (later General Sir Aylmer) Haldane; and some ms memoirs (19pp), written in 1973, concerning his service from August 1914 - July 1916 and with the 2nd KSLI in Ireland from 1919 to 1922.
Cataloguer RWAS
Catalogue date 1982-10 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | King's Shropshire Light Infantry 1st Battalion 9th Battalion British Army 7th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment 25th Division 2nd Battalion 3rd Division | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Hughes-Hallett, N M | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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