Many years ago in the 80s I worked at a museum in Market Harborough in the English East Midlands. At the time it was realised that people who had directly worked in Domestic Service and people who experienced WW1 were coming to the end of their lives, so the curator set out to interview them and record them on tape. It was my job to archive the tapes and link parts from one person's stories to others and so collect evidence from different sources that could be used to make a social history of the area.
I found out so much from listening to the voices of the men and women who had lived during those times.
There were some very interesting accounts of The Harborough Boys and the war.
There was a rumour that the commanding officer had been killed by his men! Bearing in mind that then men from the same town fought together and the officers might have been the gentry of that area.
From listenning to the accounts I remember hearing that the officer died along with other men when they were marching along a gun-line. The guns apparently started a barrage. The resulting vacuum destroyed the marching soldier's lungs.
If their voices were not recorded then things would be lost and forgotten.
Good to hear that people want to achive the stories from WW2 veterans.
experiments to find a better way to mount aircraft for wargaming.
