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Reporting the war was heavily censored as the government controlled the flow of information from the front line. Apart from letters from soldiers written home to loved ones, newspapers were the main source of communication.

Public radio broadcasts did not start until 1922. With the British ‘stiff upper lip’ and War Office’s tight regulation of the press, most war stories did not even make the front page of local newspapers.

Jenny Eastwood, editor of the Gloucester Citizen Newspaper and Chris Chatterton, director of the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum, have been in the Gloucestershire Archives turning the pages of various Gloucestershire newspapers from 1914 to 1918.

Chris has been comparing the accounts written in the Battalion War Diaries with the newspapers reports, and Jenny has cast her journalistic judgement over those 100-year-old newspapers.

One notable feature of the newspapers is the dominance of advertising on the front pages. This is where we expect to see today’s main news stories, but a century ago the news of the soldiers on the front line was often saved for the back page. Not only was the information buried on latter pages, it often omitted vital facts.

Chris and Jenny explore the Battle of Loos – a major offensive in September 1915. The 10th Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment described in the official war diaries of difficult, wet conditions in the trenches moving heavy cylinders of poisonous gas to the front line at night. When this key battle was reported in the Gloucester Journal October 1915 there was no mention of the use of poisonous gas. The attempt had been unsuccessful with an unfavourable wind meaning the gas settling back in the British trenches, gassing many of the troops.

Censorship of the press held back the information about how unsuccessful the poisonous gas had been and no doubt the government did not want to draw attention to its use, as only months before the German Army had been severely criticised for using such means of attack.

Presented by Jenny Eastwood, Editor of the Gloucester Citizen Newspaper and Chris Chatterton, Museum Director of the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum.

Location: Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester GL1 3DW

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