Canadian War Diaries from the Second World War

With the 75th anniversary commemorating the end of the Second World War occurring this year more people are researching what happened to their ancestors and relatives that served during that war. Unlike the First World War, many of the personnel service records are not easily available to researchers due to privacy restrictions. For researching into those that served Canada during the Second World War I'll generally send people to the Second World War: 1939-1945 landing page on the Library and Archives Canada site as a starting point.

One often overlooked resource when researching the events that involved our men and women that served and fought in the Second World War are the War Diaries, Ships Logs, and Operations Record Books. Keep in mind that these are not the diaries of those that served but of the units and ships. You will often find mentions of officers but in these diaries and logs it is uncommon to find the enlisted personnel recorded in the pages. Unlike the First World War where the war diaries of the Canadian Expeditionary Force have been digitized, not all the Army war diaries from the Second World War have been digitized or even microfilmed. From the Library and Archives Canada page their guidance for searching states:

Second World War (1939-1945) and Korean Conflict (1950-1953)

References to War diaries (RG24-C-3) can be identified by using the Advanced Archives Search.

• In the pull down menu, select Finding Aid Number, and enter: 24-60
• Enter a keyword, for example, the unit name: "Royal Canadian Dragoons" or "Princess Patricia's"
• Some volumes are available on microfilm.
• Some of the microfilm reels have been digitized on our partner site Héritage.

Sounds almost simple doesn't it? It is, and yet, like most of our research, it often isn't. I'm going to walk you through a few examples.

First of all, you need to go to the Library and Archives Canada Enhanced Archives Search - Advanced page. Once there you need to instruct the search engine to search by Finding aid number 24-60 and also by the keyword of the regiment or unit you are interested in finding. In this case it is the unit of my grand-uncle Ronald McGregor Warrener who died on July 25, 1943 in Sicily, the 48th Highlanders.

Screen capture from Library and Archives Canada Enhanced Archives Search - Advanced with search terms of Finding aid number 24-60 and keyword 48th highlanders.

If everything works out, after you click the Submit button, you will get a list of results.

Screen capture with the results from the Library and Archives Canada Enhanced Archives Search - Advanced with search terms of Finding aid number 24-60 and keyword 48th highlanders.

In this case you see that there are several items with PDFs. The first for May 1944 to August 1945 and the second from August 1945 to October 1945. The PDFs contain the digitized regimental war diaries. However, the one that I'm interested in is #3, March 1942 to April 1944. There are no images or indications of PDF files so I will will need to click on that link to see what is available.

Screen capture from Library and Archives Canada record description for 48th Highlanders of Canada, Canadian Active Service Force, 1902/03-1944/04.

What you will find is a description of the item in the collection. For our purposes the "Conditions of access" is what we are interested in. In this case, there are no references to a microfilm and no links to a Online MIKAN item are found in the description. This means that we will need to visit Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa or have someone visit that place for us to view the actual regimental war diaries. Fortunately, back in 2015 I did just that.

Photo of the spine of the Regimental War Diary for the 48th Highlanders of Canada, May 43 to Apr 44

In addition to the weather report and the often boring daily accounts of unit business you some times find funny or interesting items in the diary, like what they thought of films "Saboteur", rated poor, and "Footlight Serenade", which was rated as good.

Regimental War Diary for the 48th Highlanders of Canada, 26-27 May 1943

Or, in the case of the entry for July 25, 1943, a very bad day with the death of Lt. R. F. Osler and 10 O.Rs. along with 2 missing and 38 wounded. It was through reading about that day in the book "Dileas: History of The 48th Highlanders of Canada 1929-1956" by Kim Beattie that I learned more about what happened to to "Pte. Red (R.M.) Warriner" and the rest of his brothers-in-arms of Dog Company.

Regimental War Diary for the 48th Highlanders of Canada, 25 Jul 1943

Sometimes, in the search for the war diaries, you will come across a description like this for the Headquarters of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade:

Screen capture from Library and Archives Canada record description for Headquarters, 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 1944/05-1944/06.

In the "Conditions of access" you will note that there are references to two microfilm reels, T-12331 and T-12332. Remember that one of the bullets in the guidance from Library and Archives Canada was that "Some of the microfilm reels have been digitized on our partner site Héritage." Let's open a new tab in our browser and head over to the Héritage site to search their catalogue. If you haven't used the Héritage site before, pop over to my post "Old School" Research With a Modern Twist" to learn about what that site has and how to search it. As you can see below, I've entered in the microfilm number T-12331 in quotes in the search box.

Screen capture from Héritage site looking for microfilm T-12331.

We see that there are two results returned when searching for T-12331.

Screen capture from Héritage site with search results when looking for microfilm T-12331.

Clicking on "War diaries : T-12331" will bring up the first image from that microfilm. You might have noticed that there are 1674 pages. There is no easy way to search the diary for mentions of any names since, unlike the T-1489 microfilm, it hasn't been indexed for a full-text search. You will need to flip through the various digitized pages to find the dates that you are interested in.

Since this is from the Headquarters of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade it has quite of bit of military information about the upcoming Operation Overlord, the landings on Normandy Beach. You will find various maps, unit boarding allocations for the landing crafts, and other details. There is also some interesting art work!

"Cover page for Signal Instructions, Appendix "D" 9 CDN INF BDE Operations Order No. 1, 18 May 1944.", War diaries : T-12331. Library and Archives Canada. Heritage microfilm T-12331, image 515.

As for the number of digitized microfilms that may pertain to the Second World War regimental war diaries hosted on the Héritage site, it has 1353 reels available in this collection. Unfortunately the metadata provided for the microfilms doesn't include the name of the units. So flipping through the microfilms will be time consuming. To learn what units may be on a specific microfilm go back to the Library and Archives Canada Enhanced Archives Search - Advanced page and enter in the Finding aid number 24-60 and for Any Keyword use the microfilm number. For example, on microfilm T-10561 the search results include:

• 7th Canadian Division - war diaries [textual record]. 1942-1943. Series.
• 7th Canadian Division - General Staff. 1942/06-1943/09
• 6th Canadian Division - Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General. 1942/06-1943/10
• 6th Canadian Division - Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General. 1944/01-1944/05

I have come across a few cases where this search doesn't return any results but it is better than nothing.

I hope that you have fun learning more about what happened in the Canadian units that your ancestor or relative served in during the Second World War.