Update on Blog

Some updates…

February 1916 War Diary Entry

Taking a more measured and thorough approach I am doing soldier research before I transcribe the war diary. An Excel database has been created to better organize the work that has been done to help track the research and prevent duplication of effort. One of the big jobs is going to be entering all the soldiers that have already been researched and placed in the blog and the soldiers that have been mentioned in the blog but not listed.

As to be expected February’s War Diary only mentions officers and not Other Ranks. Below is a summary of the names and the status of the research.

Of particular interest are the soldiers “not found” made more difficult by the fact that the LAC database has very rudimentary search capabilities. For example, if you search a surname (i.e. Mitchell) often the LAC database starts with the forename not at the ‘A’s s you would expect but with the ‘D’s for example and you have to cycle through the pages manually to find the ‘A’s. A common name like Mitchell has over 1200 records in the LAC database making finding this officer a real challenge. Couple this with the fact that many officer’s that joined in the 1st and 2nd Contingents did not have service numbers and the challenge only deepens.

The soldiers left to research are:

Lieutenant Kerr, 18th Battalion

Lieutenant R. C. Mitchell, 18th Battalion

Lieutenant J.A. Cane, 18th Battalion

Below is a tabular representation of the soldiers mentioned in the February 1916 War Diary.