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Description: | 5 ms diaries written while serving as a junior officer in the 227th Field Company RE (39th Division) in France and Belgium from October 1916, including much domestic detail about the Company but also many interesting entries, notably about the fighting for the Ancre Heights (November 1916) towards the end of the Battle of the Somme, the Third Battle of Ypres (July - September 1917) and the failings of Army organisation; together with two volumes of ms transcriptions of his letters home, November 1917 - January 1919, covering his experiences during the German spring offensive of 1918, and then in command of the 227th Field Company well behind the line on the Western Front from June 1918 until his return home prior to demobilisation; an important and extensive series of ms and ts diaries, some with later edited transcripts, covering his service with the British garrison in Tientsin, North China, January - March 1932, as Assistant and later Deputy Superintendent of Design (for tanks and all tracked vehicles) at the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, February 1933 - May 1934 and January 1935 - September 1936; as CRE Quetta, India, with responsibility for its reconstruction after the earthquake, December 1938 - August 1940; as Chairman of the Tank Development Board, GHQ India, August 1940 - September 1941; as Deputy Director of Tank Design in the Ministry of Supply, November 1941 - February 1942, and as British Chief Technical Liaison Officer to the US Army Ordnance Department in Detroit, Michigan, March 1942 - December 1945; together with a fine series of ms letters, in part incorporated into the diaries and all with ts transcriptions, from Major General Sir Campbell Clarke, December 1935 - December 1969, who was Deputy Superintendent of the Design Department, 1933 - 1936, a member and later Chairman of the Ordnance Committee, December 1936 - June 1938, and successively Director and Director General of Artillery, June 1938 - May 1945. The papers contain a mass of valuable information about technical developments and personalities in the tank world, and are a key source on the mechanisation of the British Army, 1933 - 1945.
Cataloguer RWAS
Catalogue date 1979-02 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | MacLeod-Ross, G | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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