Maritime soldier's war diary reaches new audience 100 years later

A Maritime soldier’s diary from the First World War is being revealed on a special blog in a creative way. Each blog entry comes exactly 100 years to the day after the soldier put pen to paper back in 1916.

“I was amazed that he continued writing,” says Bob Murray of his father, Harry, who wrote in the diary for the first three months of 1916.

“People get diaries and they start one day, two days, and they ‘ahhh I’m tired of this.’ But then he did that whole period of time in the band, recruiting around Nova Scotia or starting to recruit around Nova Scotia.”

Harry Murray was with the 85^th Battalion, playing with the Highlanders Band. They travelled around the province helping to recruit young men to go fight overseas.

“His instrument was the snare drum, but he ended up with the bass drum occasionally,” says Murray. “It would attract crowds and so the crowds would come and the young men might be inspired by all this.”

Bruce MacDonald, a retired teacher with an interest in local military history, asked Murray if he would share his father’s diary on the Internet, resulting in the birth of an online blog called Harry’s 85^th Diary.

“A lot of it was describing their daily routines during the day and, in some cases, in particular, lots of after-hour social activities,” says MacDonald.

MacDonald has been making daily entries on the blog using the diary entries Harry Murray wrote 100 years ago. Each entry has a photograph or postcard from the time, showing the community or person featured in the diary entry.

Harry Murray stopped writing in the diary near the end of March 1916, with only a couple of entries in October detailing the trip overseas to England.

“But they weren’t permitted when they got to the front,” says MacDonald. “They were not permitted to keep a diary, mainly for security reasons.”

As for people around the world being able to read about his father’s personal experiences, Murray says he has no problem with it.

“He certainly had lots of, had lots of times with some of the ladies at that time, but he wasn’t married at that time, so that would be natural, a soldier meeting up, so that was the only thing,” he says.

Murray died in 1974 but, thanks to the blog, his service memories will live on for future generations.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Dan MacIntosh