Well Merry, the local paper, the Mid Sussex Times printed a weekly listing of everyone who had joined up in any capacity, and many families were passing on details to them of news received in letters about their family members, both the living and the dead. I've no idea if this was a local or a national phenomenon.
They are currently printing reproductions of pages from 1915 though they are difficult to read as it was a broadsheet so are much reduced in size in the modern paper.
My earliest research meant trawling through microfilm at Burgess Hill library, but they have now digitised the war years, which has made things simpler. The Sussex Agricultural Express entries came from the British Libraries newspaper site, the paper was based in Lewes but included some Haywards Heath news.
|