History 482
January 26, 2016

Soldier Experience:    What Remains Today

The purpose of this week's readings is to build the skills necessary to complete the final assignment, which is a comprehensive soldier biography, utilizing both personal papers and official documentation.  This week's materials are designed to help you read and make sense of a First World War service file.

For this exercise you are examining the service file of Private George Broome.

There are a number of resources linked for this week which are crucial in assisting you to understand how to read the file.  They are very important tools in working through the file and you need to make use of them as you read the file.

The service file is full of details about Broome's time in the army, such as locations, dates, terms, battalions, etc.  Each of those pieces of information is referred to as an "entry point", which is a possible avenue for further research.  In a sense they allow you to enter into the world of that individual and conduct further research regarding that individual and/or his time in the service.  An example of an entry point could be the battalion he served with - what is the background of that battalion, where was it stationed, what battles did it participate in, etc.  Other entry points might be if the soldier was wounded, as the medical records will contain names  for hospitals - where were they?  Or there will be terms used in the service files which could be entry points for further research - what was a casualty clearing station for example? 

The number of entry points are very numerous and are limited only by imagination and curiosity.  This is part of the work that historians do, and these are the types of questions that they ask of a source.

For this week's materials you are to isolate eight (8) entry points from Broome's service file.  These should be meaningful entry points that can lead to further research and assist in helping to understand his life.

You are to arrange those entry points in the order in which you feel is their order of importance.

For each entry point very briefly (one or two sentences) explain why that point is important and what that point could/does tell us about Broome.