The First Last Day on the Somme

Mrs. Clara Simpson

8 Ponsonby Road , Liverpool

November 11, 1915

My beautiful Clara,

Bonjour from France! We arrived two days ago after an uneventful voyage. The Channel was calm and cold. I didn’t even get seasick. Upon debarking, we Immediately took a train to CENSORED and are preparing for deployment but we haven’t yet been told exactly where we’re going. It is thrilling to be here after so many months of drilling in Salisbury, however, my spirits sink as I move further from you and Leo. The undisturbed French countryside is dramatic and beautiful yet dull and diminished when compared to your radiance.

I had intended to send you a longer letter that I composed on the train, but a spilt cup of tea ruined it before I could deliver it to the post, and I have scant time now as we ready for the front. I shall write you again once we have settled into our positions. I miss you desperately and think of you constantly. Tussle Leo’s hair for me and tell him that I will make him and England proud.

Your loving husband,

Owen

P.S. when writing me, address your letters to Corporal Owen Simpson, 89th Regiment, Liverpool Pals.

Our position along the front may shift, but the military will know where my regiment is stationed.

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Corporal Owen Simpson

89th Regiment, Liverpool Pals

November 23, 1915

Dearest Owen,

I am so grateful to know you have arrived in France. I worried about you being aboard a ship and I’m glad the unexpected placidity alleviated your seasickness. But now I fear for you even more. There are stories from the front in the papers every day, always about great battles and splendid heroics, but do not even victors and heroes sometimes fall?

Each night Leo and I pray for your safety and for England’s victory. We pray that you shall return to us soon. After Leo falls asleep, I pray that you will soon hold me in your arms and create little moments of perfection with your whispers and your ways. Then I lie alone without your reassuring warmth, my soul empty like my bed. Finally, sleep takes me and I thrash restlessly, dreaming that I am eternally alone while you take death as your mistress, captured by her explosive embrace.

My Owen, come home to me. I have never desired anything so much as I do your presence. I am incomplete without you and Leo needs his father. Can you not forgo this madness and return to us? Each day without you rends my heart and every day imagining you at risk frays my nerves. Come home to me, my love.

Your faithful wife,

Clara

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Mrs. Clara Simpson

8 Ponsonby Road, Liverpool

December 23, 1915

My beautiful Clara,

Happy Christmas! This should be a time of joy and love, but without you these snowy plains are bleak, not cozy as they should be. Our section of the front sits across from CENSORED along the river CENSORED, and it has been quiet. We can see Jerry in the village across no man’s land, but he keeps to his trenches, and we keep to ours. The snow reminds me of a blanket, a blanket I should be snuggling under with you. But instead, I sleep in a freezing hole dug into the side of a trench, sharing my rotting cot with rats. I cannot decide to whether to kill them to protect my health or let them live so that they keep me warm.

We are lucky that there is little action, but the days are long and slow. We’ve taken to calling the village Monty-Bong and sometimes the boys lob mortars at it for sport. Occasionally, Jerry gives us a good blast back, but there’s little in the way of real fighting. Even our nighttime raids are uneventful. I hope this brings you some comfort. My safety is less at risk than my sanity and my lovesick heart.

Oh Clara, your absence makes this misery unbearable. I fight for England, for Liverpool, for the men around me, but mostly I fight for a better future for our Leo and for my return to you. Your love is the flame heating these cold nights. Your light is the star which shall guide me home.

Your loving husband,

Owen

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Corporal Owen Simpson

89th Regiment, Liverpool Pals

January 12, 1916

Dearest Owen,

A new year and renewed hope for the end of this miserable war and your return home. Each time I receive one of your letters, I weep to know you are still safe. I have saved them all to bind into a book so that we may remember how no distance, no war, no damnable kaiser can tear us apart. Our love is stronger than the steel of his bayonets.

Last night I dreamt of us together in those Shropshire fields, laughing under the sun and loving beneath the moon. I hold such memories in most precious esteem now, and I summon them when the ache of your absence is most acute. Alas, their soothing effects quickly fade. Only future such moments will heal the anxiety I carry for you now.

My prayers are for nought but your return. Neither for England nor for empire, neither for victory nor for heroism. Only for my Owen.

Your faithful wife,

Clara

P.S. As a belated Christmas gift, I enclosed this small portrait of me and Leo I had taken at a shop on Charles Boulevard. ____________________________________________________

Mrs. Clara Simpson

8 Ponsonby Road , Liverpool

February 4, 1915

My beautiful Clara,

How much joy your picture brought me! I taped it to the inside of my small field notebook so that it is always with me, and I carry the notebook in my breast pocket so that you and Leo will always be near my heart. I feel as though simply having it with me these past few days has warmed me from within. More than once now I’ve been unable to tear myself away from the splendor of your gaze. One time it took a rat crawling over me to disturb my fixation on your image, and on another occasion our lieutenant reprimanded me for being distracted during stand to because I was peering into your eyes rather than down the sights of my rifle. How can I help myself when one view was so captivating, the other so ugly?

I miss you with every beat of my heart, but now at least your picture rests constantly atop it. Soon, I hope your head will rest there again once more as it has so often in the past.

Your loving husband,

Owen

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Corporal Owen Simpson

89th Regiment, Liverpool Pals

March 7, 1916

Dearest Owen,

Your son took his first steps yesterday. Only two of them on his first attempt before falling, but he is resilient like his father, and by the end of the day he was toddling as many as five steps. It brought a joy to my heart like I haven’t felt since before you departed for training, but it was not as joyous as it could have been because you were not here to partake in it.

I despise this war for keeping us apart. I watch Leo grow and see you in his eyes and I wonder why you must be gone. I lie alone at night with a smoldering fire waiting for you to return and stroke it to life. I cannot wait for the day you come home to me. I need you to come home to me.

Your faithful wife,

Clara

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Mrs. Clara Simpson

8 Ponsonby Road , Liverpool

April 22, 1916

My beautiful Clara,

I had meant to write sooner, but the spring thaw has stirred the Germans, and Jerry is now more active, probing our lines and raiding our trenches.

We go out raiding at night as well. I’ve been three times now myself, and each trip beyond the wire fills me with the excitement of a man alive and the dread of a man who may wind up dead. I take the picture of you and Leo with me each time. You are my guardian angels. And you are good ones; during our last raid, we captured eight Germans!

Leo walks! Not yet one and he walks. What a strong lad he will be. I am so proud of him. How I wish I could have been there to experience such a moment, but I know I will be there for so many in the future.

We will be together soon, my love. Until then, keep your embers smoldering. Mine burn for you too.

Your loving husband,

Owen.

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Corporal Owen Simpson

89th Regiment, Liverpool Pals

May 15, 1916

Dearest Owen,

How horrified I was to read your last letter. I cannot bear the thought of you in danger. I can but barely entertain the idea of you in your dilapidated trench. My love, I am scared. The papers are buzzing about a summer offensive. No one knows where or when it will happen, and it is hard to know what is true and what is propaganda being spread to CENSORED & CENSORED & CENSORED and how much of it is meant to confuse German spies.

Still, it seems certain an offensive is coming, and I worry each day that you will be put in more danger. I pray for your safety in the morning and in the evening. When I’m not praying for you, I’m missing you, and when I’m not missing you, I’m pining for you. Come home to me, Owen. Come home to me.

Your faithful wife,

Clara

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Mrs. Clara Simpson

8 Ponsonby Road , Liverpool

June 8, 1916

My beautiful Clara,

I see you in my dreams. You come to me as my salvation because my waking hours are full of nightmares. Spring brought a fury I could not have imagined until it erupted around me. I cannot myself understand what I have seen; I cannot imagine it possible or desirable to describe it to you. No, you are an angel. The only good thing in a world of despair. You and Leo are all that matters. I fight for nothing but your love.

Clara, pray that they do not send us over the top again. There is nothing there but death. A patch of hell between two trenches. I would cross it for nothing except to reach you.

I love you, Clara. I love our son, Leo. I will walk through hell for you if I must. Pray that it doesn’t require that.

Your loving husband,

Owen

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Corporal Owen Simpson

89th Regiment, Liverpool Pals

July 2, 1916

Owen,

Write me immediately. The papers are ablaze this morning with news about yesterday’s offensive. It is all that anyone can discuss. I must know that you are okay. Owen, I must know. My love, write me, please.

Clara

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Mrs. Clara Simpson

8 Ponsonby Road , Liverpool

July 3, 1916

Dear Mrs. Simpson,

It is with greatest sorrow that the War Department of His Majesty’s Government notifies you...