Giant task in store for novice archivist team

The volunteers, with virtually no archiving training will contribute on a semi regular basis. They will be provided with the names and the research is down to them, through use of the county archives and online material available.

Laura Cotton, County Archivist based in Aylesbury, said: “We are publishing a log of all of the men, women and children who served from Buckinghamshire, either from the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry or The Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry or contributed to the war effort from home.”

“We have a lot of information to get through! Casualty books, letters and reports of what happened. It’s impossible to know the exact number of people who served but we estimate roughly 10,000.”

“We came to this number by adding up all the work that Bucks Remembered have done, who have catalogued the names from local war memorials. But obviously this doesn’t take into account the people who returned from war.”

The project will run to 2018 and has been funded by a £40,4000 grant from the Heritage lottery fund. People can upload their own information onto the fully online, digitised archive.

“There is no definitive list for us, and we have to include the immense contribution of women and children to the war effort too - for example the Women’s land army and the Voluntary Aid Detachment.”

“We want to encourage everyone to get involved, please get in touch with Katherine Doyle, the project leader at [email protected]”

Got a story for us? Email [email protected]