fourteeneighteen's researcher-in-chief: Chris Baker
Welcome to my page! I am Chris Baker, the founder of fourteeneighteen. The business is me, really. I occasionally call on others to help me locate documents in archives that are not ones I would normally visit, and I enjoy the help of a tremendous network of First World War academics, experts and enthusiasts, but most of the archival work, all of the interpretation work and all battlefield tours are done by me.
As with many of my clients, it all began with my own grandfather Frank Wilson. He died before I was born so I never had the chance to ask him what he had done as a soldier, but I knew he had been because my Mum had a photo and his medals. And some stories: he was badly gassed and a wound to his hip led to him being discharged. In the days when I began to look for him - boy, was it difficult! No internet then; no soldiers records released to the public. I know all about him now: how he enlisted into the Territorial Royal Field Artillery in our home city of Birmingham; how he got promoted but was reverted to Gunner when he messed about in PT; how he went to the Somme, when and where he was wounded and where he went for treatment. I am sure he would be proud to know that I cared enough to find out.
It went on from there. I began my Long, Long Trail website in 1996 (in the days when the internet was strictly for geeks). This spawned the amazing Great War Forum, which grew too big for me to handle on my own. I joined the Western Front Association in 1991 and eventually became its Chairman (which is where the network of international contacts I enjoy today began to develop). In 2007 I completed the new MA in British First World War Studies at the University of Birmingham and in March 2011 my first book comes out. If someone had told me in 1981 when my first job as a production engineer began that one day I would make my living from history, I would have gawped in disbelief.
I've now researched on behalf of private clients some 4000 soldiers; accompanied some truly great people on battlefield tours and followed in the footsteps of their grandfathers; given dozens of talks and met some of the most interesting folk.
Perhaps my most enduring memory is to have taken a client (a lady, with her husband and children) to the remote country lane in France where I had found her grandfather had been taken as a prisoner of war in 1918. To have been able to find this out, take the family there and watched the children pick poppies (and indeed find some fragments of shells) on that lane was something to cherish. I have always believed that the men and women of 1914-1918 were something special. It's just wonderful to be able to do a little to make sure they are remembered.
