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EMPIRE'S WITNESS: A Soldier's Secret War Diary 1942–45
In June 1940 Alwyn Robinson Day escaped western France only hours before it fell to the advancing German army.
Two years later, on 19 June 1942, the 37-year-old father of three sailed from Liverpool in a vast convoy and began keeping a wartime diary.
Eight decades later his grandson, award-winning journalist Philip James Day, reconstructed that journey from the diary, scattered records and unit war diaries.
The result revealed an extraordinary odyssey across 27,000 wartime miles of sea, desert and mountain.
Empire’s Witness asks a simple question: what did Alwyn see?
The War Diary 1942–45. Primary Source
Alwyn Day’s handwritten diary runs to ninety pages and includes photographs, a map of Bombay harbour, prayers collected in Jerusalem, and a certificate marking his ‘Crossing the Line’ at the equator.
Written between June 1942 and August 1945, it records a soldier’s journey through the wartime world, not through grand strategy or official history, but through places, movement, atmosphere and daily experience.
Cross-checked against service records, convoy routes and wartime archives, it proved to be the starting point for reconstructing a remarkable journey across the last great reach of the British Empire.
The British Empire in 1942
-For 400 years it was the largest in history
-One in four people lived under the Crown
-From Iceland to India, Iran to Malaya, Gambia to Australia, the empire stretched across the globe.
-In 1942 Winston Churchill was considered leader of the free world
-But by 1945 the Empire was on the brink of a rapid decline.
military records 1939–45. Primary Sources
Military Enrollment
Medical Reclassification
Military Enrollment
This enlistment record shows Alwyn Day joining the Supplementary Reserve on 20 February 1939, a part-time commitment that became full military service when Britain went to war later that year.
Service Record
Medical Reclassification
Military Enrollment
Service records trace Corporal Day’s postings, release, first medal entitlement, arrival in Iraq on 19 June 1942, and a briefly imposed punishment for smoking after blackout, later cancelled.
Medical Reclassification
Medical Reclassification
Medical Reclassification
Corporal Day suffered pneumonia while serving on the Persian Corridor near Tehran, and the medical record suggests lasting damage to his lungs. He also later experienced ear problems, possibly connected to German bombing in France in 1940.