ABSTRACT
This book has revealed the origins of operational reporting in the early decades of the Twentieth Century, and interrogated the processes and technologies through which these records are accessed via The National Archives in the Twenty-first Century. The Conclusion identifies the influence of earlier practices of record keeping in today’s processes of Operational Record Keeping (ORK) in the British Army. The Conclusion highlights the questions that still need to be raised about ORK, both past and present, in the British Army and in other military forces, at a critical juncture when both warfighting and archiving are facing unprecedented challenges in the digital world. It summarises this book’s central argument around the significance of technologies and materials in crafting documentary reality in Unit War Diaries, and how they reflect and express broader ideological impulses, particularly bureaucratic notions of calculability and efficiency, and scientific rationalism. It reflects on the implications of the ways in which Unit War Diaries have shaped the understanding and waging of war, specifically the critical ramifications of the attempted erasure of emotion, suffering, trauma, unpredictability and chaos in the reports of war for the writing of history and for the future of the British Army’s organisational learning and identity.
