The Wartime Diaries of Arthur L. Linfoot

This website features a contemporaneously written, first person account of life before, during and immediately after the First World War, including a period of active service in France. Arthur Linfoot - a private in the 58th Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps - was posted to northern France in 1916. He kept diaries written in Pitman's shorthand between 1914-1918 (and likely in the years before and after, although no other diary has survived). These wartime diaries were kept in a family collection, and latterly transcribed by Arthur's surviving son, Denis, for the benefit of the author's living descendants in about 2012. To mark the centenary of the conflict, entries from the transcribed diaries were published by Christopher, Arthur Linfoot's grandson, in the form of a contemporary blog. Entries were posted in delayed real time, so that each day's entry appeared on the centenary of the date to which it referred, with the final entry posted on 31 December 2018. Arthur's experiences also featured within the 2016 'ASUNDER' project that was led by Sunderland Culture (see separate 'Mapping the Centenary' listing).