‘Scribbled hastily in pencil’: The mediation of World War I Unit War Diaries

Abstract

In World War I, the British Army implemented daily record keeping throughout its organization. Despite being crucial to the army’s operational effectiveness and essential for historiography, the history of Unit War Diaries as mediated artefacts has been largely overlooked. This article investigates the interplay of culture, institutional practices and hitherto unnoticed technologies of writing involved in the mediation of operational record keeping. It reveals Unit War Diaries as not just containers or conduits in the army’s practices of Information Management but as the nexus of tensions between bureaucracy, technologies and individuals that have shaped the understanding of warfare.