World War I Love Stories by Gill Paul

Author:Gill Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Ivy Press
Published: 2014-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

A letter from Fred, written on September 12, 1917, telling Evelyn that he had been sent to France. He couldn’t include details of his location, but described a town where the trees were all dead, blighted by the effects of poisonous fumes.

On the morning of October 20, Fred wrote telling Evelyn that it was “a fair morning again and the sun is shining,” then added, “Tell Mrs B. that I am carrying her Belgian coin for luck.” (Mrs Brown was a family friend who had given him the coin before he left.) It seems he knew he was being sent to the front line near Ypres that day, where the Third Battle of Ypres (also known as the Battle of Passchendaele) was raging. The village of Passchendaele had been chosen as a target because it was on the supply route for the German Fourth Army, but conditions were atrocious after weeks of heavy rainfall had turned the ground into slippery mud. It was Fred’s first engagement in the fighting and it would be his last. On October 26, when Canadian forces joined the battle for the first time, Fred’s company was stationed in a badly exposed spot, with no adequate trenches. Fighting was fierce and during the day Fred’s position was hit by a shell that killed several men, including him. Only two or three men from his platoon of fifty-two soldiers survived.

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