Royal Artillery, 40 th Survey Regiment

[Drew5233]

Hey up,

Yes, you can pre-order six different files if you already have a readers ticket but it's 3 at a time after that when you are there.

[Spikey68]

Well, either way, war diaries are mighty tomes, so it's not like one gets to twiddle one's thumbs waiting, lol. I was there 9 hours on Thursday and only managed to photograph 6 sets of ORBs. That's without the luxury of actually reading them!! Still, it should keep me busy going through 1600 photographed pages

Sally, even if you take up Andy's kind offer in this instance, I would recommend a visit at least once, just because it is a great feeling holding documents that were written/typed in that period. And there is nothing more "fun" than trying to read and photograph stuff typed on war economy paper (it's like the toilet paper one used to get in schools lol).

Anyway, enough digressions on this thread...sorry.

[Nutley]

Hi Spikey and Drew, thanks chaps for the excellent information provided on Th National Archives Office.
The question is how much will need to be copied? 
Sally

[Drew5233]

Hi Sally

Unit War Diaries vary greatly in thickness depending on who was writing them. No two diaries are the same and in many cases as well as the daily entries as to what a unit was doing and where they were doing it many also contain standing orders, operational orders, some contain sketch maps, nominal rolls and all these add to the total number of pages in anyone file. On average I would say war diaries contain between 200 to 400. Some do contain more and some less-It is a bit pot luck on the thickness.


Cheers
Andy

[Jon Russell]

P.s.!

A couple of drawings were put into a book 'The Nomadic Soldier' by Cliff Russell

My grandad is Cliff Russell. He wrote that book.