[Closed] Letters from the trenches 1918

Wow, what a piece of history. He survived? He is sugar coating it a little for Bertha's sake, but that speaks of a brutal ordeal with near daily near death experiences. A lucky man to live through it. Thanks for sharing!

Blimey, that sounds severe...

Amazing find. I still have a load of letters written by my dad to my mum in the Second World War. She forbade us all from reading them, so I am waiting for an opportunity to burn them then I’m going to spread the ashes at one of her favourite spots. We did put a load of them into the coffin with her, but then found a load more when clearing out the house 😀

Amazing piece of history.
Get in touch with the regimental archive and they'd be interested in copies possibly.

Have shared this with my other half. She's a history teacher and doing assemblies all week next week on remembrance.

thankyou for sharing this.

We don't know how fortunate we are.

Wow just wow !! Love the pre snowflake era 🙂

@MarkyG82, is she going to read it out or something? There’s another good one but my stepson has it at the mo.
It would be interesting to hear/see any reaction from your better half’s class!

Wow just wow !! Love the pre snowflake era 🙂

Yeah, it was probably against Matts human rights but he was still there.

Not sure as she has already done her presentation for it. I'll ask her to let me know their reaction if she uses it.

Either way it's an amazing read. She was driving at the time but I read a bit out to her.

Yeah, it was probably against Matts human rights but he was still there.

Point proved 😉

Wow, what a find! Was Matt known to your MIL Essel or were the letters just in the house from a previous resident?
I wonder what happened to all the souvenirs?
My Grandad was in WW1, although he died before I was born the horrors he endured affected him for the rest of his life.

Was Matt known to your MIL Essel

Matts brother married my wife’s grandmother. So grans brother in law.
It appears the baby mentioned was called William & only lived to be 16 yrs old.
No idea about the souvenirs but in another letter Matt mentioned he’d got hold of a German revolver & was bringing it home! Love to know where that ended up.

Fantastic - a real little bit of history captured there.

A few on here could do with reading some of these old letters when they show disdain for people remembering these folk. Never forget.

What an amazing find. Matt was one of the luckiest.

I wonder how his confidence in success in the next assault really was, presumably he would have written to make his wife less worried.

When my grandma, Alice, died, mum found some letters from my grandad, Arthur, to Alice during WWII. Arthur was taken prisoner at Tobruk (not sure which of the two main battles, but '41 or '42. He was a tank driver. For most of a year, he was MIA and Alice probably thought he was dead. The Red Cross found him in a POW camp in Italy and wrote to her.
There's a Red Cross postcard he'd written that was simply crammed with lines and lines of the neatest, tiniest text, which, though it contains mostly mundane stuff (possibly censored otherwise), is incredibly powerful and is almost my only insight into a man I didn't really know, as he died when I was quite young. Round the edges, to save space, he wrote a few sentences to my mum, Margaret, who would have been about 4 or 5 then and probably had little memory of him.

He was obviously there until the end of the war, 3 more years or so in the POW camps. Not once did he speak of it to family, and by all accounts he was a changed, quieter, man. A good friend of his went on holiday to Italy a few decades later, and I don't think he ever spoke to them again, so appalled was he that they would treat Italians as possible friends.

Words are so powerful, even when they only relate the simplest stories. In context of our modern knowledge of both wars, what Matt wrote gives a remarkable insight into his bit of the war.

Amazing insight into a absolutely horrific time.
My grandfather was in the RE in WW1 and on the front line in France for 3 years. I’ve a copy of his company diaries and reading them do wonder how he survived and I’m here. Loads of his company were killed and he was wounded and gased. On one day towards the end of the war they were told to hold the line against a German attack until the last man. Unimaginable thought getting an order like that. He used to talk about some things but not the gory stuff as we were pretty young although that didn’t stop him teaching me to roll cigarettes when I was 7!
It’s worth seeing whether Matts company diaries have survived - many were destroyed in the Blitz apparently. If they have they will be in the National Archive and have been digitized and can be downloaded for a small fee. They are a day by day account of what the company were doing written by an officer and can contain battle orders which are fascinating and may cross reference with the letter.

Shitting hell. Thanks for sharing.

Different times. The world is on fire and the guy at the front is writing to his sweetheart, "I'm knee-deep in shite and bodies, by the time you read this I might be dead. If I'm not, I'd like a haircut and my shoes need a polish."

Different times. The world is on fire and the guy at the front is writing to his sweetheart, “I’m knee-deep in shite and bodies, by the time you read this I might be dead. If I’m not, I’d like a haircut and my shoes need a polish.”

When you put it like that it’s even more poignant.
There must be loads of letters like this & even more descriptive kicking around in lofts & old boxes.

I’ll have a look at the ones my stepson has & see if they’re worth posting.

Thanks for sharing EGF, and others above who have shared family stories. Shocking and thought-provoking. Indeed we are fortunate these days.