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post ww2war diaries

has anyone here had to complete the filling of war diaries at all ?
Can you tell me what the process was ? were the forms completed daily , weekly , Monthly ? Was the detail left to some odd bod who got dicked for the job ?
did op banner units file diaries ?
cheers troops .
 
15/19H (and Light Dragoons) have Regimental Journals going back about forever. We had a regimental newspaper (The Tab) and on sub-unit deployments, we had sub-unit newspapers. The journals are held at HHQ at Fenham in Newcastle. I believe copies of newspapers are also kept.

Alan Mallinson wrote a history of the LD and antecedents including post-war. He acknowledges that he was helped by working with records at the MOD.

If you access these documents listed above, you'll find I wrote many column inches for Command Troop, 78-80 and three pages in the 1981 Journal (covering 1980) describing the passage of HMSTY Sabre from Gosport to Gib in March 80.

If there aren't formal diaries because there's no war, everything will still be recorded somewhere.

Aside. Whilst researching family tree a decade ago, I visited Durham Records Office. Bored one afternoon, I mooched and found a fiche tape of the war diary for a battalion of DLI. It started about 4 June 1944 at Hursley in Hants (where I worked for 18 years until recently. There's a bench at the South entrance to the site that lists dozens of units and formations packed in during the build-up to D-Day. There's no other trace now). The war diary literally just started with no preamble, a bit like starting a new Guard Commander's Occurrences Book. The unit were in the line very near Villers Bocage the day Wittmann went postal. An illuminating read.
 
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