I Was There! - 1916 accounts have commenced

The Western Front Association's team of volunteers working on the 'I Was There! series have now commenced the accounts relating to the year 1916. A large proportion of these are accounts of the Battle of the Somme. But before we get to the Somme campaign, the episodes will be covering personal stories from the western front earlier in 1916, plus the Battle of Jutland. 

The reminiscences are all narrated with accompanying images.

Brilliant images

We have been asked where the images we use are found, and how are they so realistic.

Part of the answer is to do with the rapid development in 'Artificial Intelligence' that we hear so much about.

Take, for example the latest episode, which is "I Saw Fields of Death at Kemmel, by Lt-Col R G A Hamilton". The thumbnail for this is below.

The image is made up of elements that were originally published in the magazine (Part 15, page 20) as shown below. 

Sinking of HMS Hampshire

Another example, used in another video - in which the sinking of HMS Hampshire is described - is below. Here we have another poor quality black and white photo which has been enhanced into what is a high quality colourised and life-like image. The photograph is of Mr W.C. Farnden, who left an account of his surviving the sinking of HMS Hampshire. 

As members will be aware, these magazines are all available to be read via the WFA's 'Searchable Magazine Archive' (which can be accessed via members' personal 'log in' credentials). 

If you have yet to log in to the new website there's guidance here: Members area: Password reset

All copies of 'I Was There' can be accessed via this Searchable Magazine Archive, and using the search function 'key words' can be readily found (such as 'Kemmel' for this episode comes up 23 times in the 'I Was There!' editions and 252 times across all the magazines we have scanned).

IWT Videos on the website

With the launch of the new website, we are grouping the videos in a new area, and these can be filtered using the drop down option. Please do go and have a play with this function to pick out groups of videos - for example The retreat from Mons to the entire Gallipoli campaign.

Just click here to find these: I Was There Videos 

Explore more

The videos are also grouped (following the format in the original magazine) into 'Chapters' (on YouTube these are 'playlists') and can be seen on the WFA's YouTube channel. These playlists are here: