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Description: | Ts transcript (18pp), with photographs, of a very interesting diary fragment describing his service as the Church of England chaplain to the 8th and 9th Battalions Devonshire Regiment (7th Division) during the Battle of the Somme, 30 June - 5 September 1916, when he was largely concerned with the recovery of the wounded and the burial of the dead, together with his most revealing ts essay (75pp), written in 1919 with later revisions, analysing the work and assessing the achievements of Church of England chaplains with the infantry during the First World War. The essay stresses the many obstacles which the chaplains had to surmount and the fact that, for some time after the outbreak of war, their duties were largely restricted to compulsory Church parades, the care of the sick and wounded, burials and the organisation of voluntary and communion services; Crosse argues that the chaplain's opportunity to make a real impact did not come until both the Army authorities and individual padres gradually realised the enormous influence which chaplains could exert in the maintenance of the troops' morale and that their time would be more usefully spent with the men 'at work' in the trenches rather than back at a Field Ambulance. With these papers is some 1919 - 1920 correspondence with other chaplains relating to the essay's projected inclusion in a book, never published, on the work of Church of England chaplains in the 1914 - 1918 War and copies of various brief publications by Crosse bearing on his active service as an Army padre.
Cataloguer RWAS
Catalogue date 1981-02-19 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | Chaplain Department 9th Battalion 8th Battalion British Army 7th Division Devonshire Regiment | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Crosse, E C | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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