01/07/2016
Marking the centenary of the Battle of the Somme today, we are delighted to launch a project we have worked on with colleagues across the Library, lead by those in M&ARL.
Fit as fiddles and as hard as nails, Irish Soldiers’ Voices from the Great War contains digitised and transcribed diaries, letters and memoirs from the Great War all free to access at the webpage below.
They are voices from the front line from seven Irish officers. The youngest was 20 years old, Charles Wynne from Wicklow. His sister Emily Wynne’s writings are also included. She wrote a ‘home front’ diary from Greystones.
The authors served on both Western and Eastern Fronts. Three of them were Trinity graduates; two never came home and two received the Military Cross. Among them are Lieut. Henry Crookshank, father of Trinity’s History of Art Professor, Anne Crookshank, and Captain William ‘Pat’ Hone, descended from the famous Hone family of artists Nathaniel and Evie Hone. He was father of author Leland Bardwell who died this week.
Please share with any and all you think may be interested!
TCD Alumni Trinity College Dublin The Library of Trinity College Dublin
‘Fit as fiddles and as hard as nails’ – the phrase comes from diarist Stanley Beresford Mundey’s description of the effect on soldiers of a regime of hard work and scant food. Whatever was the original author’s meaning, to the modern ear this unsettling phrase – hard as nails – chimes with what we n...
