| WELCOME TO... CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE! By: Hannah Goldberg On this site you will be able to experience first-hand the Battle of the Somme during World War One through the eyes of a soldier named Robert Lindsay Mackay. You will be offered two choices on each page, and you must choose only one to be able to continue. Make wise choices though, because your aim is to make it out of the battle alive, just as Mr. Robert Lindsay Mackay did. We begin with an introduction by Mr. Robert Lindsay Mackay. The following events arebased on the true events that he had written in his diary, and this introduction explains his diary and what to expect. 2 August 1972 "About this diary of mine!" "I finished, two days ago, what I intended to be positively the last contribution to my side of the family story, quite certain that apart from minor corrections here and there, nothing more could be added. then I looked around for something to do. It occurred to me to look at my diary of WWI which had been in my desk or on my shelves, almost unopened and unread, for over fifty years! "Indeed, only three persons had read it, namely John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir) who had asked for a perusal of war diaries for his History of the 15th. Scottish Division, my friend Dr. D.T. McAinsh, M.C., and the third, strange to say, my next-door-neighbour, Chatwin. About a month ago, Chatwin had been talking about the Somme Offensive, of which he was a survivor, and I mentioned I still had my Somme diary, and he asked for the loan of it to compare with his experience of that prolonged battle. "I am not quite clear why I wrote this diary, day by day, a scrappy record of a scrappy period. I had no literary or military ambitions. My parents did not read it. Perhaps it was to provide a kind of continuous alibi, to remind me where I had been, perhaps an interesting memorial if I failed to return. "Like cakes off a hot griddle, it was written as events occurred, or immediately thereafter, in four little brown leather-covered notebooks, and when the war ended these were in no state to last long for they were soiled and grubby, and, where written in pencil, the writing was faded. So, in 1919, I copied their contents, straight off, without editing, into two larger notebooks, and destroyed the four littles ones. "The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on; not all they Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it." Without Further ado, the diary of Robert Lindsay Mackay. GO TRAINING CAMP and begin your journey! |
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