ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the creation of records in writing spaces in which war was considered as a form of industrial labour. It reveals the origins of the implementation of Unit War Diaries as an expression both of bureaucratic processes and of ‘scientific’ approaches to war. This chapter reveals how the pre-printed Army Form C.2118, generally treated as transparent by historians, plays a critical role in shaping information about events in conflict and in mediating the relationship between individuals and the Army as an institution. It focusses on the indelible pencil and on handwritten diaries to explore how, despite practices and technologies designed to erase the individual and delimit the nature of information about war, Unit War Diaries offer unique insights into the embodied, emotional experience of modern warfare. Through a combination of linguistic analysis and close textual reading, this chapter investigates collisions between individual affective responses and bureaucratic systems of control within the official structures of the Unit War Diaries of the First World War.
