Archives » Wednesday, January 16, 2008
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David Botti
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Jan 16, 2008 12:29 PM
Over at the English blog "WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier"
there's a fascinating history lesson going on in real-time. Bill
Lamin, the grandson of WWI English soldier Harry Lamin, has been
posting the wartime letters of his grandfather exactly ninety years to
the day from when they were first sent. On this blog the first days of
2008 are actually the first days of 1918. The latest post (from Monday) is fascinating in its mundane nature--Harry is thanking the letter's recipient for sending a package:
I have received your letter. I have also received two parcels of woollen goods from Mrs. Higgins but you can’t carry a lot of stuff about we have enough to carry about...Your biscuits was grand and I enjoyed them. I have also had a nice parcel from Kate she said she enjoyed the Christmas alright at home...It is still very cold out here at night and we have had some snow. it is different to being out in France, very quiet.
Bill Lamin told CBC news
his grandfather was an "unexceptional, quiet, let's get on with it sort
of person." That's what makes this blog so great--it's just the
stories of an average grunt writing home to his family. At a time when
the last WWI veterans are dying the blog presents us with a first
person glimpse into a war that soon no living person will have
experienced. As the BBC put it:
A young English soldier wrote [his
thoughts] down on scraps of paper, gun fire ringing out all around. He
could not have known that nearly a century later thousands of computer
users would be hanging on his every word.
The blog is the story of Harry
Lamin's wartime experiences, and his grandson refuses to give away the
ending; no one knows whether Harry made it out of the war alive. Bill
told the BBC:
We're in the position of his family.
We're waiting for the next letter or maybe a telegram from the war
office saying he's been killed. That's really the whole point of the
blog. We're as close as we can be to his family waiting for more news.
Here's a selected post describing Harry's experience in battle:
Three days after, we were called up the line again
of course I went this time. We had to go to the front line were it was
on the Menin Road no doubt you have heard about it. We were there for three days it was awful the shelling day and night. We relieved the KOYLI about
10 o’clock and what do you think Fritz came over about 5 o’clock next
morning we had an exciting time for about one hour and a half I can
tell you. but we beat him off he never got in our trenches he was about
two hundred strong it was a picked storming party so the prisoners say
that captured, they brought liquid fire with them and bombs and all
sorts but not many got back we had twenty casuals and the captain got
killed a jolly good fellow too. I was pleased to get out of it but did
not feel nervous when I saw them coming over. No 1 in our section was
on the gun and we used our rifles. Our Coy as to go before the general
for the good work we have done. We have just been given a long trousers
again as we have had had Short ones all summer.
Thinking
about the deaths of remaining WWI veterans today one can't help but
think of a time when Iraq/Afghanistan vets will be in the same
situation. Despite the enormous amounts of press coverage and
documentation, in the future perhaps only one man or woman will be
alive to remember what it was actually like patrolling the streets of
Baghdad.
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