Ethel Andrews, for instance, was sent a letter reassuring her that according to the US ambassador, whose country, then still neutral, was monitoring the PoW camps, parcels sent to prisoners “appear as a rule to arrive safely and without undue delay”. In many cases, the collection includes information on how the Foreign Office processed the pleas for help. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. “We get rice water and horse beans only, no solid food, one load of bread for six days, several men have been run through with bayonets by the guard and a large number are being flogged and tied to a barbed wire post for six hours with their toes just touching the ground, they do this without any just cause … it is worse than being in hell.” skip past newsletter promotion Some of those details did make it past the German censors, among them a harrowing account that Tpr SG Law had concealed inside a split postcard, and which was received by his mother on Christmas Eve. “This was a new era of conflict at the time, there was a strong sense that war was governed by strict codes of conduct but by 1915, when many of these letters were written, families at home were waking up to the idea that their loved ones were suffering enormous hardships.” You can really get a sense of the trauma, confusion and dawning horror of those seeking answers and receiving fragmentary reports of conditions in PoW camps. “It offers a unique glimpse into the experiences of these soldiers and their families during world war one. “This collection holds some hidden gems which have been held for over 100 years in the National Archives and published online for the first time for the public to explore,” said Paul Nixon, a military expert at the family history website Findmypast, which has published the documents. These and other remarkable letters, held at the National Archives, are now being published online for the first time, part of a cache of documents from the British government’s Prisoners of War and Foreign Aliens department during the first world war.Īlongside hundreds of pages of official correspondence, there are dozens of poignant letters from the parents, sisters and wives of missing and imprisoned soldiers, either pleading for news of their loved ones, complaining about the conditions in camps where prisoners were supposed to be treated fairly, or imploring government officials to trace letters and care parcels that had never been received. I may mention that I am giving all my four sons to the service of the country.” “Now, my lord, it is with the greatest reluctance that I write to bother you when you are so overworked, but I do so because I rely on your great sense of justice.
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