{"id":1789,"date":"2014-06-03T13:18:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T12:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2014-06-03T13:20:52","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T12:20:52","slug":"army-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/2014\/06\/03\/army-children\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Army Children of the First World War\u2019 project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest blog by Clare Gibson, Founder of The Army Children Archive (TACA).<\/em><\/p>\n

The Army Children Archive (TACA) [http:\/\/www.archhistory.co.uk<\/a>] collects, preserves and shares information about British army children (the children of career soldiers serving in the British Army) and their history. As a virtual archive \u2013 a website \u2013 TACA is instantly accessible to anyone, anywhere. Sharing and collaboration are just as crucial to TACA as accessibility, and those who have contributed to it have added considerably to our knowledge and understanding of the impact that having a soldier as a father can have on a childhood, and, indeed, an adulthood.<\/p>\n

To mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, TACA recently launched its \u2018The Army Children of the First World War\u2019 [http:\/\/bit.ly\/ArmyChildrenFWW<\/a>] project. Because so many children\u2019s civilian fathers joined the British Army as volunteers or conscripts between 1914 and 1918, TACA\u2019s remit was widened to encompass all<\/i> British children whose fathers served as soldiers during the First World War, and not just \u2018barrack rats\u2019, \u2018pads\u2019 brats\u2019 or \u2018army brats\u2019 (all nicknames given to the children of professional British soldiers). After all, when your father is absent from home and facing very real danger, it matters little to a child what sort of soldier\u2019s status he has been accorded.<\/p>\n

The project\u2019s core focus is two online galleries of images accessed via Flickr, as follows:<\/p>\n

1) \u2018The Army Children of the First World War: Faces and Families\u2019 [http:\/\/bit.ly\/ACFWWFaces<\/a>] gallery consists of a set of photographic portraits of army children and their families photographed between 1914 and 1918. Any known information about the faces and families pictured, or any clues offered by the photographs themselves, accompany the images. Viewers are invited to fill any information gaps and, if possible, to identify these forgotten faces.<\/p>\n

2) \u2018The Army Children of the First World War: a Sentimental View\u2019 [http:\/\/bit.ly\/ACFWWSentimental<\/a>] displays a selection of First World War-era sentimental postcards and ephemera featuring the children of soldiers, and children generally. These fall into various categories: many are patriotic, while some are heartening, and others are designed to tug at the heartstrings. All raise interesting questions about national perceptions during the First World War, and about how war affected those on the home front.<\/p>\n

Each set\u2019s original ten images is now being added to at the rate of one a week. Their collective visual impact, as well as the issues that individual images raise, are already providing food for thought, issues for discussion and entry points for further research for schools and historians.<\/p>\n

TACA is also contributing these images to Europeana 1914\u20131918<\/a>, a historically neutral and increasingly invaluable portal in providing detailed insights into how the citizens of Europe\u2019s combatant and allied countries experienced the First World War. The images showcased by our project may have been \u2018made in Britain\u2019, but we feel that they also highlight the similar experiences and common feelings of innumerable children during the First World War, regardless of their nationality. Their countries may have been at war, and the soldier\u2013fathers who faced each other across no-man\u2019s land may have been enemies, yet their children must have been unwittingly united by the shared hardships that they endured on their respective home fronts, as well as by the powerful emotions \u2013 such as sadness at parting and joy on reunion, or incomprehension or despair at a father\u2019s wounding or death \u2013 that blighted or lit up their lives during the First World War.<\/p>\n

Historical distance, along with initiatives like Europeana 1914\u20131918 and, I believe, our own project, highlight humanity\u2019s commonality and the shared experience of army children of all nations. For despite our differences, we are not so very different after all.<\/p>\n

Clare Gibson
\nFounder, The Army Children Archive (TACA).<\/i><\/p>\n

A question for you:<\/i><\/b>
\nIt is early days for \u2018The Army Children of the First World War\u2019 project, which will almost certainly be expanded over the next four years to enable others to contribute their own images and stories. In view of this, I have a question for you: should we further broaden the project\u2019s collaborative scope to include a \u2018The European Army Children of the First World War\u2019 aspect? If you\u2019d like to see this, do let us know. (You can send an e-mail to TACA: <\/i>tommydrum@f2s.com<\/i><\/a>; or tweet us: @ArmyChildren.)<\/i><\/p>\n

Thought-provoking images like those that our project is showcasing [1 and 2], and their German equivalents [3 and 4], give us an insight into the experiences and preoccupations of those whose lives were shaped by the First World War. They also highlight how much we have in common, then as now, whatever our nationality.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\"1<\/a>

1. British family of three<\/p><\/div>\n

\"2<\/a>

2. British child in uniform<\/p><\/div>\n

\"3<\/a>

3 German family of three<\/p><\/div>\n

\"4<\/a>

4. German child in uniform<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest blog by Clare Gibson, Founder of The Army Children Archive (TACA). The Army Children Archive (TACA) [http:\/\/www.archhistory.co.uk] collects, preserves and shares information about British army children (the children of career soldiers serving in the British Army) and their history. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digitisation-user-generated-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1789"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1814,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789\/revisions\/1814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-new.it.ox.ac.uk\/runcoco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}