Diary found in a Glasgow attic details the terror and tedium of front line life
By Edd McCracken

A UNIQUE first world war diary and memoir by one of the first black soldiers in a Scottish regiment has been discovered in a Glasgow attic. Private Arthur William Roberts's writings have lain unread in a cardboard box for nearly a century, until the house's new owners discovered them late last year.

The diary, kept between between May 19, 1917 and March 6, 1918 while he was serving with the King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) and Royal Scottish Fusiliers, is full of vivid descriptions: a tearful farewell from Edinburgh; dodging "Jerry's" shrapnel in France; surviving gas attacks and the suffocating mud; the "terrible yet wonderful" experience of going over the top; the boredom of life in the trenches.

"We want him to be remembered as Arthur Roberts, not as a black soldier, but it was unusual to have a black soldier in the regiment then," said Ian Martin, of the KOSB Museum. "There were black regiments fighting in the first world war and they were subject to quite a lot of racial abuse and prejudice. But he is the only one I've come across in the KOSB."

The issue of Roberts's race is barely touched upon in the diary - the only mention is shot through with a self-deprecating sense of humour.

In an entry dated July 17, 1917 he writes: "After a short but tiring march we got motors. In these we travelled for miles. At the journey's end we were like bakers covered with dust. My hair being white I was like Uncle Tom."

What emerges is a sharp portrait of a young soldier from Glasgow serving in France and Belgium, including at Ypres. Roberts recounts the brutal training regime, his fascination with the lights and sounds of the front line ("We were so interested in the flashes and noise of distant artillery that for a time we forgot bed") and being falsely accused of destroying a pair of boots and narrowly avoiding a court martial. He nonchalantly describes the shelling as: "Jerry is still noticing us and paying us compliments."

In one entry he describes how he survived a massacre: "We were shelled to blazes One fellow in front of me had his head blew off. The chap beside him was severely wounded. The chap next to me was wounded and one of the chaps behind me was killed and the fellow beside him was wounded.

I completely escaped."

Most of the diary, however, recounts life in the trenches: waiting to be deployed, to be paid, for his rum ration, and waiting for the war to finish. His personal life is briefly mentioned - he receives many letters from "the girls" but only mentions his family once, when he writes a letter to his father.

As well as the diary and memoir, which Martin is currently transcribing, paintings of Roberts's time in Europe were also found. But little else is known about the rest of Roberts's life.

Morag Miller, a retired NHS worker whose son discovered the diary last October in their home in Mount Vernon, has been attempting to piece the rest of his story together.

She discovered his father was from Bristol, but moved to Glasgow when Roberts was a child. He went to school in Partick, returned to Glasgow after the war to work at a Harland & Wolff diesel factory, and possibly died in a care home in Cardonald in the early 1980s.

The KSOB Museum is now trying to fill in the blanks. Martin said: "There may be some relatives still alive. They might have more material."