Gallipoli Diaries: 1st Bn Lancashire Fusiliers

the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers at Gallipoli. A fully searchable, accurate transcription of the battalion's daily war diary during one of the Great War's more controversial and brutal campaigns.

Great War Diaries is focused on creating accurate transcriptions of British Army war diaries from the Great War. Every unit commander was obliged to maintain a unit diary - rather like a ship's log - that recorded their daily operations throughout the war. The original diaries were largely handwritten under very trying circumstances and can be difficult to read. The digitised versions available via the National Archives are images that can not be word searched. Great War Diaries' transcriptions do two very important things: they make the illegible handwriting easy to read. At the same time the transcription creates a searchable document. It is now possible to search a whole diary for individual names and places in a matter of seconds.

The Gallipoli diaries cover over 200 battalions of the British Army that fought at Gallipoli. Each diary typically runs into many thousands of words. Collectively they amount to over 1.5 million words of raw military history. Great War Diaries offers unique digital access to searchable diaries. For the first time it is possible to access and search the full texts of hundreds of diaries and explore the depths of the archive material in a matter of seconds.

Often some parts of the original Brigade operational orders are missing from the Battalion diaries. Where we have discovered the original orders we have been able to add these back to the Battalion diaries. Similarly, operation reports and other related material can be reassembled. Effectively this process partly rebuilds some of the 'lost' documents and reconstructs the missing parts of these important records. In addition the original files often contain important correspondence between surviving Officers and the author of the British Official History of Gallipoli. These are typically detailed narratives or personal diaries. Where possible we have added these back to the diaries as appendices.

We have also added fatal casualty data. Each diary has hundreds of names appended. It is now possible to search for a fatal casualty and seamlessly track the casualty to the relevant diary date. By integrating the diaries and casualty data the diaries become enhanced documents. As more material is becomes available it will be added and the e-book diaries will be updated.

Great War Diaries is dedicated to providing low cost access to a searchable database of British Army Great War Diaries. We have a back catalogue of hundreds of transcribed diaries and will be releasing them on a regular basis.

The transcriptions are based on the original diaries which are Crown Copyright material held at the National Archives UK (NAUK). They are produced here under the UK Government Open Licence.