1205723 Mjr. Philip Henry Pilditch British Army 235th Brigade Royal Field Artillery from:Weybridge Philip Pilditch was my great uncle. He was one of the few who served from earliest days to the end and spent the majority of it in action. He changed batterys in the early days moving from 18th to 19th and 20th, and then spent time as a Artillery Brigade Adjutant. He then worked as a Captain and part time OC of C Batterym 235 Arty Bde.
He wrote a diary throughout the war and had a few copies printed and bound later on. I have one of the copies. He was also a contributor to the 47th Divisional History
Philip was training to be an architect before the war (his father, my great-grandfather), had a very successful London practice at that time. As a result, he was asked to carry out a number of construction tasks for the brigade and also divisional artillery and kept notes of these as well as sketches some of which he included in the diary. examples included new gun-pit designs, emergency evacuation roads, dug-outs etc.
His diary is full of interesting comments and extraordinarily detailed accounts of daily life, most of which was spent either just behind the lines with the batteries, or in the lines as an OP.
Almost his final comment in the diary is his assessment, made after Armistice, that the three things he would be most pleased to get away from were the mud, the German shelling and the Staff !
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