WWI diary to be blogged
The UK Express reports that 82-year-old Denis Linfoot is transcribing his father’s diary about the years leading up to, and his participation in The Great War as a blog, each entry appearing 100 years after it was written;
Private Arthur Linfoot volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps when he was 25 in 1915 and kept a diary of his experiences in the trenches of France.
His diary, written in Pitman shorthand, chronicled January 1 1914 to December 31 1918 and have been decoded by his 82-year-old son Denis.
Mr Linfoot, from Canterbury in Kent, learnt the old form of shorthand so he could read his father’s diaries and spent months looking at the journals.
The blog is “The Diary of Arthur L. Linfoot | January 1914 – December 1918” and begins on January 1st, 1914.
Category: Bloggers, Historical
So I looked up Pitman shorthand, and all I can say is how the hell can anyone read that? it looks like scribbles. I can’t imagine “translating” 4 years worth of it.
A couple of others have done the same thing —
http://wwar1.blogspot.com/
http://www.harrys-ww1.co.uk/
http://dieter-finzen.blogspot.com/
Thanks for posting this, Jonn. Can’t seem to post a comment there, but a great concept and good on Mr. Linfoot.
People should remember their history.
There’s a good reason to learn archaic communications like Pittman and Gregg shorthand. Just because something isn’t in common use, doesn’t mean it can’t be used when necessary in another time.
I think this is a great thing Mr. Linfoot is doing.
Recently read a free kindle book “Now It Can Be Told” by Gibbs. It is a pretty raw 1st person narrative of The Great War as recorded by a English war correspondent (Gibbs). He kept all his notes and observations that he was not allowed to publish during the war due the military censors…he published the book 20 years later when censorship was no longer an issue. The book is free in Kindle format on Amazon.
Also I highly recommend Hardcore History by Dan Carlin (podcasts) which are each 3 to 4 hours long, particularly “Blueprint for Armageddon” which begins as an awesome series on the events and circumstances that led up to the war to end all wars. I listened to Pt 1 a couple weeks ago while I was building fence and I was really impressed by the way Carlin rounds everything up and presents it. I am telling you, you will be spellbound if you are into history and war.http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive
I will look forward to reading the Linfoot blog. Thank you for the link.
for those of us who use Nooks, there is a free software called Calibre that is very easy, intuitive to use, which allows you to change e-book formats. So if you have books in Kindle format, you can convert them to Nook format (or vice versa.) Very handy to know…. I plan to buy PH2s books and convert ’em.