For You The War Is Over

Our new exhibition at General Register House, Edinburgh, reveals previously untold stories of Scottish soldiers who were captured on the battlefields of World War I and imprisoned in Germany.

On display for the first time from Monday 22 October, soldiers’ personal letters and photographs tell their stories from “behind the wire” in their own words, including one soldier’s darkly amusing war diary.

Scottish Prisoners of War clashed with their captors and resisted their authority, to make running prison camps as difficult as possible.  Documents and audio recordings of prisoners’ personal testimony take visitors onto the battlefield where they were captured and inside the camps to find out how they continued the struggle against their captors with courage, resilience and humour.

Letters and other documents describe ambitious escape plans, hidden tunnels and a long trip home in a famous general’s personal motor car, while items sent from Scotland show how worried families helped to maintain the men’s morale, their health and their sanity.

Presented in a unique partnership with private archives, For You The War Is Over uncovers these inspiring and tragic events to explore the experiences of those who returned home to their families after Armistice Day and those who sadly did not.

The exhibition is open on weekdays from 22 October to 23 November at General Register House, 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh, between 10 am and 4.30 pm.

For those of our followers who can’t make it to this exhibition, you can find more artefacts throughout the next month by following us on Twitter at @NatRecordsScot.

We’ll also have a triple-whammy of World War I podcasts coming up right here on Open Book to download at your leisure, including

• An in-depth look at the contents and characters of our POW exhibition;
• The war experiences of staff working at Register House during WWI, and
• An investigation into the revealing records of the Military Pensions Tribunal, which adjudicated on financial support for soldiers injured on the battlefields of the Western Front and further afield.