There were medals from the First World War, nothing fancy just the Victory Medal and a couple of Service Stars; the sergeants stripes from his uniform; beautifully preserved photos of him and his mates in France and Belgium and then, close to the bottom of the pile, I found a handwritten letter from 1916 whilst his Dad was on the Somme.
It was to his mother, he'd just got back to the reserve lines after a few days on the frontlines. The first thing that impressed me was how steady and ordinary his handwriting looked, but as I read down the page it surprised me even further. He'd been through probably the worst conceivable week of his life. As a part of the Allied Offensive on the Somme in July his section of the line had advanced a poultry seven miles and he described the experience of being shelled whilst in the open as one of the worst things he'd ever experienced in the war thus far. He was utterly horrified by the experience of being gassed. His mask had worked fine, but it brought home to him "...just how inhumane the whole thing has become". It really got me because he was my age and he'd had a life experience that no one who's 20 has to experience anymore.
He finished his letter with a note to his mum asking her to write every week and finished it with two lines of kisses, at least twenty, and gave his younger sister his love. I could have looked up afterwards whether or not he survived. I decided against it, frankly I didn't want to know. You'd be surprised how easy it is to forget about the human cost when you're surrounded my material that tells you of the loss; but the truth is statistics are senseless and they have no meaning after 100 years. It's things like that letter that bring it home, and I know that Blogging about it will make no difference but I just hope that you one day find something like that. If everyone had an experience like that, mankind would never fight another war.
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