Research into UK Army unit diaries offers new perspectives on war reporting

Centre member Dr Debra Ramsay (English) is changing the way we think about official accounts of Britain's wars. Despite thriving scholarship on the history of war, the shifting culture and form of Operational Record-keeping in the British Army remains unexplored.

Since the First World War, every unit in the British Army has kept daily reports. From handwritten entries to digital communications, these reports, or Unit War Diaries, are the first official draft of events in Britain’s wars. This project will introduce fresh perspectives on modern warfare through a unique comparative analysis of Unit War Diaries of the Welsh Guards, the Mercian and Parachute regiments from key conflicts of the 20th Century. By investigating widely ignored technologies and practices of operational reporting in the two World Wars, the Falklands conflict and the First Gulf War, this project will reveal the hidden mechanisms and ideologies that have shaped the very nature and purpose of the official record of conflict.