“I think we will have a little to say when all this is over” ..... letters from the Great War

Firing a heavy howitzer in France

“I think we will have a little to say when all this is over.”

It is one of those powerful understatements which so often come from men and women swept up in great events.

In this case it is contained in a letter written by George Armstrong to his brother in March 1915.

George was on the Western Front with the First Battalion of the Welsh Fusiliers and he was writing to Ted serving on HMS Orion.

And in the exchange of letters we learn that their youngest brother Charlie “is expected in London about May the 6 [and that] I should like to see him as its now been close on three years since we met and it seems quite a long time since I was home too.”

"Dad and Uncle Charlie," date unknown

In just those four lines these two men pretty well sum up the experiences of millions who were found themselves far from home on foreign battlefields with little control in what was happening around them.

They were “the little people living out their lives in a big century” and the letters are preoccupied by the ordinary things around them.

George reflects on the weather which “is still cold and proper brittle at night in the trenches” while Ted complains of being “fed up and wanting something to break the spell, of the same old thing day in and day out with tons of coal too often.”

Both share news of family and of friends who were also destined to go into uniform and there was agreement that their mother should apply for the extra money.

They are fascinating glimpses in the conflict now a century behind us but nothing quite prepares you for what is coming.

George sent his letter to Ted on March 7th and Ted replied on the 16th which  just as it should be for even in war people write regularly, in fact George chides his brother for not writing more often and Ted asks where a recent postcard has gone which he sent.

But the sting in the tail is that on March 15th George died of wounds he had received.  The envelope with his brother’s letter was marked in an unknown hand “Deceased” and accompanied by the printed message “NEXT OF KIN NOTIFIED.”

That envelope

It will be the sort of thing that was replicated over and over again during the war but there is something very moving in holding the two letters now a century old and reflecting that on the turn of a week such ordinary letters were given a tragic outcome.

It is a privilege to be able to read them and also to look at the others in the collection which David Harrop* has allowed me to use for the new book on Manchester and the Great War.**

What makes his collection so valuable is that all of the material comes from those little lives and are about how they coped with it all.

Some of his collection can be seen at two exhibitions during the summer.****

All of which just leaves me to try and track George's brothers along with his sisters and on the way possibly identify the men in this picture of "Dad and Uncle Charlie."

Now I have found the family in 1910 and again in 1911 and with more research should find out more.

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

*David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop

**Manchester, Remembering 1914-18 from the series, Great War Britain, The History Press, http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/catalogsearch/result/?order=relevance&dir=desc&q=the+story+of+chorlton

* ****The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport from July 28 and Oldham Archives, Union Street, Oldham, from August 4