PRONI's March blog recalls personal wartime stories
10 March 2015
PRONI's blog for March 2015, charting personal stories of men and women from 100 years ago, is now available to view online.
PRONI hold a wide range of records including letters, diaries and memoirs relating to the First World War and to contemporary events in Ireland, providing first-hand accounts of all aspects of war as well as the impact it had on life at home.
The March edition of the blog concentrates on a time when the reinforced British Army were launching a new offensive on the Western Front. Meanwhile on the Eastern Front, the British and French navies attempted to force a passage of the Dardanelles. The failure of this attack would lead to the Gallipoli landings in April.
A diary entry from Constance Masefield, wife of poet John Masefield, recalls the days immediately after he left for duty as a volunteer hospital orderly in France.
'Jan has gone. He left 2 days ago, and I can't yet realise it. I forgot to write to him tonight feeling somehow that he was only gone quite temporarily and then with a stab of pain I realised the miles and miles of country that lay between and the sea and the sky and all the misery.
'Oh dear life is very bitter now. I can't dwell on the pain or I shouldn't get along at all. There is no pain like this lonely sense of separateness.'
Every month, PRONI will continue to publish transcripts from the personal papers and diaries of a range of individuals who lived throughout the period.
