Poignant, painful, precious mementoes

Cpl Butters and his mother Susan
(Thanks to Helen Lang for the photo)

Some of the most moving documents I have come across in my research are the official lists which accompanied the personal effects sent home to families of dead soldiers.

'Please confirm receipt of...' the families would have been asked, and on the form were listed those little bits and pieces that made life bearable for soldiers at the front, clothing, diaries, books, all still fresh enough to bear the smell or fingerprints of their owners.

It must have been a hearbeaking task to unpack such parcels and lay out all that was left of husbands and sons - men like Richard Butters of Victoria, Australia, whose family's story is told in my book.

Corporal Butters enlisted in January 1917, aged 23, and served in the Middle East with the 15th Light Horse Regiment. Tragically, he died of dysentery not long after the Armistice was signed in November 1918.

The following month his poor mother Susan received a package which contained not only the usual military acoutrements (shorts, shirts, pocket knife, spanner) but also more personal items like a volume of poems and an Arabic book. That was not the end to Mrs Butters' anguish for in March 1919 a second parcel arrived with yet more poignant posessions: nail clippers, a hat badge, a fountain pen (damaged), wallet and photos, a diary, and a lock of hair. These mementoes of her son must have been as painful as they were precious.



Cpl Butters' final resting place
(Photo: Helen Lang)



Letters are pouring in from 100 years ago

Scrubbing up well for war: Bristol recruits Edwin Wood
and Wally Biffin (Thanks to Ted Wood for the photo)

At the top of this page is a 'Useful links' tab, and if you click it there is a list of archives and museums which hold letters from the First World War. These various repositories were all going to be visited when I began my research - with overnight stays in nice little bed & breakfasts where necessary. However, owing to the interest and generosity of members of the public, this simply hasn't happened!

 Aussie soldier Sam Pearson
(Photo: Carol Evans)

I have been kept far too busy at home with correspondence sent to me by people who have read about my project in various magazines and newsletters. This method of letter collection has had several advantages, not least of which is that most letters I have received have never been published and will therefore be completely new to readers - however widely read they are.

It has also meant that the owners of WW1 letters have been on hand to provide background information which has sometimes turned seemingly ordinary letters into extraordinary ones. They have also supplied me with photographs and cards, all in excellent condition, some of which you can see here.
And finally, I have had plenty of time to read all the correspondence thoroughly and shape my book accordingly, to give a true reflection of what was written 100 years ago.

Working in the comfort of my own home has had one big disadvantage though - none of my overnight trips to museums has materialised yet! Not to worry, there are still some gaps in my correspondence that need to be filled; for example, I don't have any letters relating to the Royal Flying Corps, very few about the Navy, and none written by Americans who were involved in the war. So once the weather improves I shall look forward to a few trips away to see what I can discover in the archives.



War-torn France: a card sent home from the front, April 1916
(Thanks to David Clark for the image)

'Cannon and musket balls flew around me'

Page 1 of Michael McCarty's letter
(Thanks to Brendan Foley for the image)

This week I thought we'd have a bit of change from the First World War, although you may not guess it from the first few lines of this soldier's letter:

'My dear wife, I take my pen in hand in order to let you know that I am well and I hope this may find you enjoying the same. No doubt but that you have heard of the great battle, which was fought last Thursday the 7th. I was there and done all I could for my adopted country.'

No, it wasn't written during the First World War but in 1861, during the American Civil War. Its author was a Unionist soldier called Michael McCarty and the things he wrote about were very similar to those in letters some 50 years later: a vivid description of battle, acceptance that death may be just around the corner, the wait to be paid, and concern for those at home.

McCarty was an immigrant from Ireland who served with the Illinois 31st (nicknamed the 'Dirty First') Regiment and he wrote the letter three days after the Battle of Belmont, in Missouri. It was kindly sent to me by McCarty's great-great-grandson, Dan Foley, and you can read the rest below. The gunboats mentioned were on the Mississippi River (in case, like me, you were wondering whatever boats were doing in the middle of a continent!) and the 'Sesh' referred to the Confederates - the Secessionists.

'The battle was fought in Missouri at a place called Belmont opposite Columbus on the Kentucky shore. The gunboats began the battle about 9 o'clock in the morning and we infantry a little before 11o'clock, which lasted until night. I can not give you a full account of whole fight as it would fill several sheets of paper but this I know that I never saw such a time in all my life and I hope that I may never see such another. But if I must, I must and therefore am ready.

'I escaped unhurt, but how it was God only knows for I am sure that I don't. Cannon and musket balls flew around me as thick as hale [sic]. Cutting down trees and bushes and tearing up the ground in every direction. Others of whom there were many were less fortunate and met a soldier's doom - Death. The Sesh were badly cut to pieces losing a great many more than our side, but ours is bad enough and who the victory belongs to it is hard to tell but it is claimed by the Union troops.

'We captured and spiked their guns but had to retreat to the boats hotly pursued by the enemy who were reinforced by many thousands from Columbus. We lost a considerable of clothing. Consisting of coats and other equipments. I would have written to you before but was expecting to get paid off every day and will write to you again when we get paid, we are looking for it every day. Write me how you and the children are getting on. No more at this time, but remain yours Michael McCarty'

Sadly, McCarty was injured later in the war at Atlanta and did not survive, but his family remains proud to this day: 'He died in the service of his new country. He was a hero, as the letter establishes pretty well,' said his great-great-grandson.


'I escaped unhurt but how, God only knows' - pages 2 and 3 of McCarty's letter
(Thanks to Brendan Foley - McCarty's great-great-great-grandson! - for the image)

'My washing water is frozen every morning'

Freeze-up in France

How soldiers on the Western Front must have longed for the winter to finish!
Even those who were used to temperatures falling well below zero were finding things hard going by the end of January 1917.

This medic, for example, came from central Canada where severe weather is the norm, but he certainly wasn't feeling at home in France. He wrote home: 'We are having real winter weather now, colder than anything experienced last year. There has been quite a depth of snow lying for the last 10 days and the ground is frozen hard. The temperature could not have been much above zero this morning which is very cold for this country. Fortunately we are not in the trenches but in billets in a village behind the lines. It is none too comfortable in billets but I hate to think of what it must be like in the trenches.

'The day the snow started we marched 10 miles in a thick storm. A hard wind was blowing and the storm at times looked almost like a blizzard. The roads are now covered with ice and frozen slush. This mess makes very bad going for horses. I have sick parade now at 6.30am and this means getting up at 5.30. My washing water is frozen in the room every morning.'

Six months later, though, life was transformed as can be seen from this letter he wrote in June 1917 which makes it hard to believe there was a war on at all!

'Yesterday was the Brigade sports day and the program lasted all day. It was blistering hot but everything went off well.Our unit won a number of events including 1st and 2nd in the mules race.

'This morning after church parade a few of us got our horses and rode off to our swimming pool which is about 3 kilometres away. The pool is an old disused quarry filled with water. It must be about 500 feet long, half as wide and very deep. It makes an ideal place for swimming although I must confess that I shouldn't mind having a chance to take a dip in the sea again. However, we all enjoyed both our ride and swim. The day is too hot for walking. 'I noticed some children out picking wild strawberries. It made me think of strawberry shortcake. Lord! It seems to me to be years and years since I have seen or eaten a piece of strawberry shortcake.'

It's good to see that soldiers knew how to enjoy themselves when the opportunity arose; after all, another harsh winter was only months away

A brisk trade in the souvenirs of war

The real thing: a piece of Zeppelin wire
raises money for the Red Cross

The word 'souvenir' is one we tend to associate with holidays or other pleasureable events we want to remember, so I was quite surprised by how often it crops up in letters written home from the battlefont. It was not all uncommon for soldiers to collect souvenirs of war- in fact it was a very popular pastime.

'I was hoping we should soon be home on leave and bring all those lovely war souvenirs such as Prussian Guard helmets and even Austrian helmets,' wrote one Tommy from France in 1916. 'I was in possession of lots of nice things but we were told we had to charge a wood on a certain day and so I had to abandon everything.'


Any old iron: WW1 memento
- an Austrian helmet

Some soldiers made a business out of buying and selling sourvenirs, like this Canadian in 1917: 'I had a lovely Fritz revolver and case, an automatic which an Aussie had taken from a German officer. I bought it for 75 francs and sold it to one of our doctors for 100. I bought a German watch since for 10 francs. It had been hit with shrapnel twice but still goes, so I am going to keep it till "Apa la Guerre" (some French eh!) [he no doubt meant "Apres la guerre"].'

But by the end of the war, some solders had no desire for keepsakes, certainly not this soldier who wrote to his wife in October 1918: 'I have not collected any souvenirs, but I have the chance to have plenty, but they do not apeal to me and I have plenty of weight to carry as it is. There is a little religious emblem I picked up at the place where I am now, and thought Tommy [the soldier's young son] would like it, so I am putting it in with this letter and I also got a small Rosary, but I have seen some beauties...'

Some souvenirs could be a reminder of happy events (if they could be called that) or friendships made during adversity. Early in the war, British soldiers were almost mobbed when they arrived in Belgium to take on the invading Germans. 'We halted in one village for an hour and a half and when we left there was scarcely a badge or a button in the regiment, all gone as souvenirs. Good luck to the Belgians,' wrote one sergeant.

Meanwhile something similar was happening at hospitals in Britain, where wounded Belgian soldiers were befriending the nurses: 'All Belgians in our ward left for camp, very sad, gave us coins and buttons for souvenirs,' wrote one Red Cross nurse in her diary in 1914.

Thanks to Lorraine Judge in Australia for the Zeppelin souvenirs, above and top

The spying game - a wartime obsession

Trust in me: the notorious spy Mata Hari

A theme which constantly crops up in the letters and diaries I have been reading is spying - something made famous during the First World War by the notorious Mata Hari who spied for the Germans and was executed by the French.

From the very start of the conflict, British civilians were always on the lookout for spies in their midst and it didn't take much to start them talking. One young nurse from Weymouth wrote very matter-of-factly in her diary in early 1916: 'German spy caught on White Star liner, in harbour.'

Another teenage girl from Bristol, who was staying with friends in Cornwall in the summer of 1914, wrote home in great excitement to say that a German spy had been discovered at Porthcurno and was being taken to Penzance to be shot there the following week. In fact condemned spies faced the firing squad at the Tower of London - and there were far fewer of them than public speculation suggested.

There are some fascinating records of those who were tried for spying at this website:  www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/wwi_spying.htm . Some accounts are fairly graphic, for example, this is what happened when 22-year-old Albert Meyer faced the firing squad: 'Before the bullets of the firing party could reach him he had torn the bandage from his eyes, and died in a contorted mass, shouting curses at his captors, which were only stilled by the bullets.'

Not all those who were accused of spying received a fair trial. One British soldier, who kept a diary while fighting in France during the early months of the war, witnessed what sounds like a fairly summary trial and execution. In the market square of Landrecies he saw a Lieutenant Colonel of the French artillery, who had been convicted of selling secrets to the German, sentenced to be shot. 'He was led away, as I stood there, to be executed.'

Back in Britain, anyone suspected of being a threat to national security could be interned and that is what happened to one Jewish refugee whose family had sought sanctuary in Britain after fleeing pogroms in Russia at the turn of the 20th century. He was interned as an enemy alien at the start of the war, although no-one in his family knows exactly why - maybe it was because of his German-sounding name.

Later he was released - only to be conscripted into the Russian Labour Corps of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and sent to France! From there he sent home a series of beautiful postcards on which he described the scenes of devastation at the end of the war. You'll be able to read these in my book.

At last, the hard work is about to begin!

Troops receive a warm welcom at Ostend, Belgium, at the beginning of the war

After six months of fascinating research into letters and diaries from the First World War, the time has come for me to start writing my book, and just as these troops must have felt when they arrived at Ostend in Belgium at the beginning of the war - the hard work is about to begin!

My background is in journalism and although this may sound well suited to book-writing, I'm afraid that's not quite the case. Writing for newspapers involves getting the facts across to the reader in an objective way, usually in as few words as possible because space is tight. Generally, there is a formula to writing news stories, they begin with an intro which gives the story in a nutshell, then continue with paragraphs explaining: who, what, where, and when.

A year or so before I was offered the chance to write this book, I moved on to writing articles for magazines, a fairly big jump in writing style which meant allowing my words flow rather than expressing everything in short, factual sentences.

Finally I'm starting work my book and yet more new skills are called for. I am having to develop a writing style which is comfortable and interesting for the reader. This means, among other things, not starting each new paragraph with 'However...', and lengthening my sentences with a few sub-clauses rather than pouncing at the earliest opportunity with a full-stop. I am now also interpreting information and presenting it my own way, rather than simply setting out the facts for the readers . This is very liberating - and also rather exciting - but I must constantly remind myself that I am allowed to do so!

There is one way, though, in which journalism has prepared me very well for this book - it taught me how to sniff out a good story. Without journalistic experience I would probably have taken the war letters at face value, simply as letters, rather than looking behind them for stories.

This is where those who have let me use their WW1 material have been so helpful. They have filled me with some some fascinating stories about their relatives during the war and I would like to say a huge thankyou. Their helpfulness, friendliness and interest in my project has made the last six months of research a pleasure.

My task now is to do justice not only to the letters but also to the men and women who wrote them. So let battle commence! (Meanwhile I'm still on the lookout for WW1 letters and diaries, so please get in touch if you have anything which may be of interest. Contact details are to the right.)