Between the Lines: First World War Correspondence

By Anthony Fletcher | Published in History Today Volume: 59 Issue: 11

The messages sent by British soldiers of the First World War to their loved ones back home have long been valued for what they tell us about daily life in the trenches. But their authors were often at pains not to reveal too much of the horror they endured. Anthony Fletcher considers what these documents reveal about the men’s inner lives.

By 1917 the British Expeditionary Force was sending home eight million letters a week. During the Great War, more than 12 million were despatched weekly to the Western Front. Letters bound families across Britain in a web of energetic support for the troops; they were a cumulative and untiring act of love and care on a scale never before known in the nation’s history. Down every village and urban street between 1914 and 1918 the sight of a postman brought hearts leaping,with hopes of words from loved ones in France or further away. In billets behind the lines, men’s hunger for letters was universal: pages were read, reread and treasured, as were photographs of wives, sweethearts and children. Through reading and writing letters in difficult and cramped conditions, often in poor light, men imagined and longed for their homes. These letters sustained them over months of arduous service and helped them find emotional solace when facing the rigours of military life.

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