World War One: A superb collection of letters written from t...

Hammer

£120

World War One: A superb collection of letters written from the trenches by Sapper Thomas Winter of West Riding 456th Field Company Royal Engineers. The letters are written over an eighteen month period, from May 1915 to October 1916. Also included in the lot is a copy of Mr Winter's will and a photograph of him in uniform, and his section of his company in the field artillery. The letters give a graphic account of life for a Tommy in the trenches. The first dated 12th May 1915 and written during the second Battle of Ypres. 'I'm still safe and sound but I must admit I've been a bit lucky. We went into action on Saturday midnight and a thundering bombardment started and 4 o' clock we rushed in on first reserve ready to take part in engineering if wanted.
A Scotch, British and Irish Division plus picked French troops took part in the battle. I was laid flat for 6 hours and daren't get up for fear of being blown to pieces with shell fire. We had no one hurt, the battle lasted 12 hours. On Sunday night we had to sleep on the ground just as we were, there were repeated attacks all night.' In the same letter he refers to rumours of the Mauretania being sunk, in fact her sister ship the Lusitania was torpedoed days before with 1198 souls. A later letter written on the 1st June refers to their previous weeks engagement. 'It cost 160 casualties, on the first night 6 of our men moved out an advance trench 85 yards off the German line. On the second night 500 infantry and Royal Engineers went over the parapet and proceeded to dig the trench but were given away by a lightning storm and the Germans opened fire. The next night we found the enemy in our new trench and some men with machine guns were sent in to drive them out which they did successfully. On the fourth night a new idea was tried, we laid in our trench while our guns bombarded the German trench from 8 until quarter to nine. There was then a pause and we jumped over the parapet but we had to lay flat as the Germans thinking we were charging with bayonets opened fire. It was like a hailstorm of fire but our machine guns on each flank and shrapnel quietened them down.' A superb archive.