Through the Great War with Reggie and Donald

Map of principal battlefields

This map shows the principal battlefields where Reggie and Donald Hunt served and fought during World War 1.

Note: the focus of the map is initially on the Western Front where the brothers spent most of their war service. However, there are battlefields in other parts of the world where they were involved in action. Donald was in action in German South West Africa with the Transvaal Scottish Regiment and in Egypt with the South African Brigade before the Western Front and in the Middle East with General Dunsterville’s British Military Mission to the Caucasus after the Western Front.

How this page came about

I had been aware for some time that my great uncles Reggie and Donald Hunt had served in WW1. I knew I had a letter that was written from the trenches by Reggie to my grandma which described something about life in the front line. But I had no real idea of what these two brothers had done during the war.

At a family event in the middle of the year, my sister asked me to do some research into a name the she and her husband had found on a church war memorial. The name was the same as her married name but neither she nor her husband knew anything about any person of that name or whether he was even a relation. I found the name of the unit that the soldier was serving in and also that he was my brother in-law’s great-grandfather but then I wanted to find more about the circumstances of his death.

The hunt led me to discover the WO 95 war diaries which are available to download from the UK National Archives. The war diaries were written by British Army units involved in action. Each diary was written up every day and detailed the activities of the unit over the course of the day. Where they were, what they did, (sometimes) who did it, what was the result. The diaries are downloadable free from the National Archives to those with an account on the website.

With this new resource, I was able to track the circumstances of the death of the soldier and the events leading up to it.

This page is the result of using the WO 95 diaries to trace the activities of the units of and (very often) the individual actions of my great-uncles Reggie and Donald themselves. We follow them through the lead up to their involvements in the war. We follow them as they get involved in battles whose names are imprinted on the consciousness of all who know anything at all about the Great War. The Somme. Ypres, Passchendaele. Arras. Armentières. Vimy. Every one of those places and many, many others feature in this story.

Even after they left the Western Front towards the end of the war there were still stories to tell about these two brothers. They were each selected for separate missions in the middle east that could almost be described as “Boy’s Own” adventures in themselves. Donald joined Dunsterforce and Reggie joined the Desert Mounted Corps. However, those stories will have to wait for future detailed research.