The latest video from the 'I Was There!' series has just been published. In this series of videos we are 'voicing' the original magazine articles from the 1939 publication 'I Was There!' in which personal accounts of those 'who were there' were published over hundreds of instalments. 

In Episode 77 we hear from Major Franklin Lushington of the Royal Garrison Artillery who wrote a classic memoir under the pseudonym 'Mark Severn'. In this account we hear from him as he was then - a Lieutenant serving the guns in the Battle of Festubert.

Two 'stand out' passages are included in this account: 

"Sandbags and dead bodies lay jumbled there in wild confusion, as if some petulant giant, growing tired of play, had thrown down his broken toys in heaps. Finally they arrived in a little trench so choked with dead and so void of all semblance of a parapet that it had been left unoccupied by our troops." 

and later: 

"Suddenly one shell seemed to be coming much closer, and Shadbolt felt a sharp pain in his leg as he dived with the others for the mouth of the dug-out. The blast of the explosion knocked him flat, and when he staggered to his feet he sound both the others, covered with mud and blood, moaning on the ground."

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The videos are being grouped (following the format in the original magazine) into 'Chapters' (on YouTube these are 'playlists') and can be seen here:

Searchable Magazine Archive

I Was There! magazine was originally published in 51 weekly issues between 1938 and 1939. The Western Front Association has undertaken a long-term project to digitize and narrate these historical accounts. The digital scans are available to members as PDF files in the Searchable Magazine Archive.

Not a member? Join us and get access to a wealth of digitised resources.