The Imperial War Museum Sound Archive holds over 33,000 recordings relating to conflict since 1914. It is the largest oral history collection of its type in the world.
I’ve recorded more than 500 hours of interview material with military veterans since joining the Sound Archive in 2004. Topics have included the fall of the Berlin Wall, good technique in an aerial dog-fight, how to escape a flooded submarine, why sailors like rum, brain surgery in the 1950s, how to track a man through the jungle, what it’s like to find yourself adrift in a lifeboat, and a perennial favourite: the best way to clean a pair of boots.
Cathy FitzGerald