WWI – the Diary of Grace, Lady Denys Burton and her work at the YMCA at Rouen, France, in 1915. Written in a red morocco bound 4to sized book which also features a number of related postcards affixed to pages, and related ephemera including letters to her, newspaper clippings, a c de v photograph of her as a small child, her Red Cross and other badges and her service medal. Together with a further smaller diary. With full typed transcript. A remarkable and frank diary chronicling the activities of the wife of an Irish baronet who went to France in order to do whatever she could for the relief of the front line soldiers during WWI. The Diary begins with her departure to France in June 1915and continues through to the end of the following July and is extensive in its observation. The transcript indicates that the diary was written specifically for Lady Denys-Burton’s children. ‘..A Northamptonshire Yeomanry Tommy told me he had been about since November and having been six months in the trenches had had enough of it. He said he could not understand by Kitchener’s army were not set out to replace himself and others as he heard that Kitchener’s army were dying to come out...’ ‘...I had a conversation with an 18th Hussar man who was off to the Front. He had been gassed and had been a month in the hospital...he was very interesting about the gas which he said was like a rising fog...’ ‘...we made acquaintance with a nice Capt Dormer and Capt Carstairs...they both took a very gloomy view of the war and saw not end to it. Capt C [said] he had done nothing and that it was the French who were now entirely holding the German line. He said he had no guns and no ammunition and not enough men and that the French had every reason to be angry with us...’ ‘...[a 2nd Dragoon Guardsman] told me about some battles when the fighting was desperate and his officer had the top of his head blown off...he himself was shot in the face by a shell with poison gas...it was full of many spies at the Front and some of the Germans dress themselves in our uniforms taken from the dead. He told that a company of Highlanders were suddenly seen coming towards them but as they were wearing their kilts the wrong way round then there was no doubt who they were...’ ‘...a very nice Territorial RAMC ...said that in the trenches the Saxons did not at all dislike the English and that on one occasion the Germans and English were talking in quite a friendly way when the German trench was re-enforced and a Saxon called to one of the English men to keep his head down. Immediately before the English man could duck his head he was shot and the Saxon was also shot by one of his officers – on another occasion when one of his regiment saw a wounded German with a shattered thigh and went to bandage it up and immediately this was done the German shot the RAMC. The rest of his men were so angry they tore the German to pieces. Lady Grace Denys-Burton was the wife of Sir Francis Denys of Carlow, Republic of Ireland.