59 DIVISION 178 Infantry Brigade Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) 2/5th Battalion : 16 October 1914 – 3 August 1918 (First World War, War Diary, WO95/3025/1)

No modern editing, opinions or poorly judged comments, just The Great War day by day, written by the men who fought this ‘War to end all Wars’. Full colour facsimile of each and every page. So – what exactly is a War Diary and why should I want to read one? 
Put simply, a War Diary records what the particular unit was doing each day. It contains a wealth of information that catalogues its various activities, whether it is bitter and costly fighting, or more mundane tasks such as training. It is generally the only record to indicate what soldiers probably did during the war. Make no mistake – there never was a detailed record kept of what each soldier or officer did at any given time. That type of minutia record keeping does not exist even today. What were kept were the diaries of the unit the man belonged to. You can read exactly what a unit did and, from that, infer what actions the men assigned to that unit did. The War Diaries are among the most popular documents to be sought at The National Archives. Chronological index to each volume. Secret and confidential intelligence. Operational orders. Battalion and company orders. Timing of attacks and attack objectives. Discipline. Meteorological weather reports. Trench raids and night attacks. Equipment diagrams and line 
drawings. Place names and map co-ordinates. Battalion and company actions. Officers’ movements. Localised trench maps and plans. Casualty figures of the missing and wounded. Hand written-up and signed each day by the appointed officer, actually at the sharp end with his men in the trenches. Uniquely rich and full of military and historical information.