World War Exhibition

To commemorate Remembrance Day Archive Services have mounted a small exhibition of material relating to the World Wars. The focus is partly on men and women who served in the British and French Red Cross, some of the 'unsung heroes' of the wars.

James Blackburn Wilson (1888-1961) served in France with the ambulance service, he survived the war and returned to Alva to the family woollen manufacturing business. The exhibition includes photographs of Wilson tending wounded soldiers and letters to his parents.

Other material in the exhibition includes papers from the collection of Margot Cox (1905-1983) who served with the British Red Cross in Italy during the Second World War and was awarded a medal for distinguished war service.  There is also a fascinating sketch and poetry book created by soldier patients at Monifieth Red Cross Hospital during the First World War.

Archive Services holds many collections relating to hospitals in the area. The exhibition features material from the Bridge of Earn Hospital which was built by the Emergency Medical Service to treat war casualties. The papers include Department of Health information leaflets advising on what to do in the case of enemy attack and treating war wounds with penicillin.

Also on display are items from the Joseph Lee archive. Lee (1876-1949) was a journalist from Dundee who served in the First World War. He was an early war poet, who wrote about his experiences in the trenches and was published in the UK and overseas. He was captured and became a prisoner of war and the exhibition shows pages from the diaries that he wrote while in captivity.

The exhibition is on display outside the Archive Services’ searchroom and for more information please contact archives@dundee.ac.uk.

Jennifer Johnstone, Archive Services