A new online archive is about to share a fascinating collection of stories and artefacts from Scotland during the Second World War.
The materials have been preserved by an Oxford University project that has digitised more than 25,000 previously hidden artefacts from the Second World War.
Photos of the objects and stories will be available to view on the project website, theirfinesthour.org, on June 6 to complement events commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
The archive contains a remarkable range of stories and objects that capture both the extraordinary and everyday lives of those who experienced the war.
Artefacts include the memoirs of James Glass from Currie, Edinburgh, who served in the Royal Army Service Corps as a driver in Palestine and the Western Desert; class photos from Rumford Street School, Glasgow; pages from the wartime diary of Sheila Jenkinson, a teenager in Edinburgh during the war; and a photograph of Eupheme Sutherland and friends making sandbags on the second day of the conflict.
The archive includes the story of William James Carrie, a Colonial Service member from Edinburgh University, who was interned at Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong after its fall to Japan on Christmas Day 1941. During his internment, William served as head of burials, and his diary details significant wartime events and daily life before Hong Kong fell.
You can read more in an article by Matthew Kidd published in The Scotsman web site at: https://bit.ly/3x1rrTG.