War timelines of Reggie and Donald Hunt

This page takes you to the timelines for each year that track Reggie and Donald through the entirety of their involvements in The Great War up to the point that they each leave of their regiments towards the beginning of 1918.

Introduction to the time lines

Each year page contains a timeline that shows the progress of the brothers and their respective units through that year.

In the timeline there are stories for each brother with Reggie on the left and Donald on the right. Each story largely focuses on the movements and actions of whichever unit the brother is assigned to at the time. Click on the story title or the “More” button to read the detailed description of that month.

A story contains a brief summary of the actions during the course the month by the unit. Then there is a map of the locations that the unit visited during the month. Below the map is a day-by-day summary of actions of the unit whether they were in action at the front, recovering from an action, training or travelling. The white summary box is vertically resizable by pulling down on the handle at the very bottom right of the white box.

Clicking on an entry in the white box will centre and zoom the map above to the location of that entry.

Very often there is specific information about the actions of the brothers where they are mentioned by name in the war diaries or in other sources.

The content is largely taken from the WO95 war diaries available from the UK National Archives with occasional material from other publications where appropriate.

Each military unit involved in the war from division down to battalion level wrote up a daily entry describing the events of the day.

At the battalion level, it seems that the acting adjutant of the battalion wrote the daily entries. However, at the end of the month, the diary was signed by the commanding officer of the battalion. Since Reggie and, at times, Donald both had command of their respective battalions, their names appear frequently as the monthly signatories.

For example here are war diary pages signed by the brothers.