Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2025 conference – a good day was had by all. More will be posted in due course on material from the day and also plans for 2026.
In the meantime, Liz Haines from The National Archives spoke about some World War 1 cataloguing that had been completed – you can read about it at https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/the-collection-blog/from-our-volunteers/cataloguing-west-african-records. Three African World War 1 collections are now catalogued: Tanganyika, Cameroon and Togo. For other countries, see the spreadsheet on GWAA which is being updated.

The National Archives has announced new fees for copies of documents and WW2 personnel record requests – see https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/the-national-archives-updates-service-fees/. Changes to how to request WW2 personnel records will come into effect on 2 February 2026.

The South African National Library has a wide variety of digital collections – some newspapers in particular covering the First World War Years.

Finally, additions have been made to the GWAA excel spreadsheets – Names of those who survived and died, Bibliography, Transport and Archive indexes amongst others.

In case you haven’t spotted it, the next Great War in Africa Conference is next week – Saturday 29th at the Africa Centre in London. Details are under the link. Please do let me know by Sunday 21 November if you are coming along so I can ensure catering is sufficient. It looks to be another good discussion day.

A plea: if you know of someone who served in the Army Service Corps in Africa during the First World War, please can you let me know. The general Army Service Corps records do not specify in which theatre someone served but we know a number did – Motor Transport units are named but not much else. A number of people are trying to place family members, where and what they did in East Africa in particular. It’s looking like their history will need to be compiled – anyone interested in participating in a group project are more than welcome. Simply get in touch…

I received very good feedback about Lemara Eco Camp which is close to the Nyerere Game park and to Kisaki village concerning help they gave a family tracing a family member’s location of death in the First World War. It’s not GWAA’s usual role to promote places but given their local knowledge of the southern part of Tanzania and willingness to share it to help World War 1 enquiries, they deserve a mention.

Although not a GWAA member, I picked up that Peter Dickens died on 13 November 2025. He was the person behind The Observation Post which covered South African military topics, including the First World War. He and his contributions to reccording history will be missed.

Some new books have been added to the Books to Purchase section.
GWAA was at the recent Britannia Medal Fair and will be at the next on 10 May 2026 with books on sale again.

Details for the 29 November 2025 GWAA Conference are now available and booking is open. See https://gweaa.com/conference-2025/

77 South Africans and 1 Rhodesian are known to have served in the Battle of Jutland – see here for details. Many thanks to Trevor, a volunteer with the Battle of Jutland Crew Lists Project for sending the information across. The list of countries represented at the Battle of Jutland.

An article on the Taveta region in World War 1 has been posted on the 1914-1918 Encyclopedia.

For researchers interested in Sudan – there is a collection of material held at Durham University – https://libguides.durham.ac.uk/asc-sudan-archive

Finally, for this month, CWGC have released their World War 2 report on Non-Commemoration: Commemoration Inequalities. Details at https://www.cwgc.org/non-commemoration/2025-report-and-response/