I Was There: The WFA's new audio-visual interpretation of the original magazines
'I Was There' was a part-work published just before the outbreak of the Second World War which provided - in weekly editions - first hand accounts of the war by people 'who were there'. It was originally planned that the series would be in forty parts, but somewhere along the way, the publishers extended this to over 50 magazines.
Sourcing a full set was a challenge, but over recent months all the series has been acquired and the full set of 51 magazines are now available in the 'members area' of the WFA website, and can be seen in the new 'Searchable Magazine Archive'.
These magazines give 377 personal reminiscences of soldiers, politicians and civilians of their participation in the Great War.
However the more ambitious piece of work which is being run and has simultaneously been launched is the narration of these 377 personal reminiscences.
A number of keen volunteers have - over recent weeks - been busy narrating these accounts and these, with accompanying images, are going up as a series of short videos onto our YouTube channel. We are delighted that the first set of these are now available on our YouTube channel and can be seen in the 'I Was There' section.
Over coming months we will add to this initial set with a view to having all 377 reminiscences available in due course.
We hope the videos and narrations will open up the history to a bigger audience.
These are being grouped (following the format in the original magazine) into 'Chapters' (on YouTube these are 'playlists') and can be seen here
Obviously as more of these are recorded and published, these chapters will increase in number.
Our sincere thanks go to the volunteers who have made this possible.
