War Office: First World War and Army of Occupation War Diaries

This series consists of war diaries for British and colonial units serving in theatres of operations between 1914 and 1922, including Russia, at home, and in the colonies, and British military missions, and Armies of Occupation between 1919 and 1922. No diaries for the campaign in South West Africa in 1914-1915 are included in this series because no British units participated; operations were conducted under the auspices of the South African armed forces.

The diaries contain daily reports on operations, intelligence summaries and other pertinent material. The range of dates shown for individual items does not mean there is a document inside the file for each day between the two covering dates.

Digital copies of selected British Army war diaries 1914-1922 can be searched and downloaded.

For intelligence summaries of information and reports on military, economic and political matters, see WO 157

Maps extracted from these diaries are now in

WO 153

As many maps included in these diaries and certain war diaries containing particularly confidential material were extracted it is thought that these reasons account for the absence of some appendices referred to on the covers of many diaries.

Extracted war diaries with especially confidential material were put into

WO 154

Topics

Army

Asia

Europe and Russia

Conflict

Diaries

Armed Forces (General Administration)

Operations, battles and campaigns

Africa

From 1907 units in active service were required to keep a daily record of events by the Field Service Regulations Part II. These records are called War Diaries or, occasionally, Intelligence Summaries.