Oral history interviews have captured the memories of real people who lived through the First World War, giving us a real insight into life at home and in service.<\/p>\n
Dorset History Centre\u00a0has recently collected an oral history interview from Miss Pat Grove of East Lulworth. Pat shared her memories of the Second World War, when Italian and German prisoners of war were based in the village. Her own Father was serving in Italy;<\/p>\n
“I think it is important to point out that even during those awful times when my father was over there…, thankfully not killing anyone, we had countrymen from where he was over here and we were being perfectly friendly and nice to them.\u00a0 There was no animosity, no sense that they were enemies at all.\u00a0 Even in that desperate time we were still human beings and nice to each other and when I see all these programmes on television about the awful things that happened there were also some good things that happened and I think it is important that it is recorded and I am proud that I was a part of that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Losing friends<\/h2>\n
Amongst our records, tucked away inside a programme for ‘Mons’ at the Bournemouth Electric Palace, are the reminiscences of Harry Patch. Harry was \u00a0Britain’ s last remaining veteran who had seen action in World War One, and shared his memories with the Royal British Legion. He recalled the loss of three friends:<\/p>\n
“The night we caught it, we were in the front line and we were going back. We had taken the German front line, the German support line and we were coming back from the German support through the German old front line. We had to cross what was the old No Man’s Land. It was crossing there that a rocket burst amongst us. It killed my three mates, it wounded me. We were on open ground. September 22nd<\/span><\/sup>, half-past ten at night. That’s when I lost them. That’s my Remembrance day. Armistice Day you remember the thousands of others who died. For what? For nothing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Dorset History Centre preserves oral history recordings<\/a>\u00a0on a variety of topics, and can offer support<\/a>\u00a0to community groups undertaking their own oral history projects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oral history interviews have captured the memories of real people who lived through the First World War, giving us a real insight into life at home and in service. Living with the enemy Dorset History Centre\u00a0has recently collected an oral history interview from Miss Pat Grove of East Lulworth. Pat shared her memories of the… Read more In their own words: reminiscence from World War 1<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[48,14],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}