WW1 Diary of Robert Lindsay Mackay
My grandfather, Robert Lindsay Mackay, kept a diary throughout his time at the front during the First World War (1916-18). It covers his experiences at the Somme, Arras, Ypres and Soissons.His position as a junior officer gave him no great overview of the war as a whole, but the diary gives an amazing insight into the day-to-day life of a soldier, the hell of actual fighting and the misery of life in the trenches. He includes a nice introduction and an epilogue in the form of a review from his own perspective, fifty years later!
The diary itself is one of very few on the internet and, as such, it has attracted considerable attention. I have received comments and questions from around the world, both from those searching for relatives in his regiment (The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) and from those interested in the battlefields in Northern France where these events took place. The text has been used as required reading for school and university courses and was featured in the final examinations for Australian children!
Copies of the diary are to be found at:
- The original text version at my cousin, Alan Hodgkinson's SoftXS web site
- The City of Glasgow First World War Memorial: A Glaswegian's War Diary
- The University of Edinburgh's Scotland's War
- First World War.com
The University of Edinburgh also kindly provided the files in PDF format:
- Introduction (Letter to his children)
- Diary (78 pages)
- Epilogue (Review as Senex)
- Obituary (from the BMJ)
Here is a Google Map put together by James Hooker, one of RLM's great grandsons. It including pins for all the places mentioned in the diary and shows the route taken in RLM's travels. This requires the Google Earth application.
RLM World War I/II Medals
