Letter to an Unknown Soldier by Kate Pullinger

Author:Kate Pullinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

Always and always,

Your Annie

Chelsea Asher

22, Bath

Dear Unknown Soldier

You don’t know me but I’m writing to you in the hope that you knew my great-uncle Claude Randall. If you did, you would certainly remember him. You worked for the railways but he couldn’t have been more different. He was an equestrian, part of his father’s circus act which performed all over Britain and Europe. The Randall Family entered the ring at a gallop, Claude’s father astride two horses with his eldest son and daughter, Frederick and Lulu, on his shoulders, and Nell, another daughter, up above. But a few years before the War began, they had performed in front of Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia, and shortly afterwards there was a bad accident. As Claude’s father pulled hard on the reins to guide the horses to the circumference of the ring and stop them galloping across the middle, the reins snapped, and they all fell, but Nell, falling from the top, damaged her knee and was unable to perform in the ring again. Afterwards, the reins were found to have been partly cut through, possibly sabotage by someone jealous of their success. It was after this that Claude joined the act, and in order to replace Nell, he wore a blonde wig during the performance! Did he tell you how he would laugh as he sauntered out after the show, passing the young men waiting at the stage door for the beautiful Claudine?

So, this is why I’m writing to you. It’s because I’m so angry with him. Perhaps I’m wrong to feel like this about someone who died in the First World War, but he didn’t have to die. With his experience of horses, why didn’t he join the Army Veterinary Corps? That’s what his two younger brothers did, and they both survived the war, remaining relatively safe carrying supplies back and forth to the front line. Did he ever tell you why he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a private instead? Well, if he was a friend of yours, you will know by now that he was killed on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, age twenty-six. I hope that his death was quick. But if you know why he made such a bad decision, please write and let me know so that I can stop feeling like this.

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