Wartime letters to little sister share details of life in the trenches
Spread across her Invercargill kitchen table, Marie Hutchinson is trying to organise the plethora of wartime photos, letters and other treasures that have been passed down to her from her mother and aunties.
The collection is an impressive one. Where some people have little more than a photograph, Hutchinson has a lot to go through.
It’s daunting trying to track of it all, she says.
She is like many other New Zealanders – holding onto precious letters and other wartime items, searching through it to get an idea of who their relative was and what part they played in war.
But there isn’t just one relative in this mix – there’s five.
There are items belonging to two of her maternal Grandmother’s brothers, James (Jim) and William (Bill) Weir. Then there’s her Grandmother’s husband’s brothers, James, Bob and Bill Robson. All came home from World War I except Jim Weir, who was killed in action at the age of 23.
Before his death he diligently wrote letters to his little sister back home, Hutchinson’s grandmother Ethel.
There were eight children in the Weir family all together, and Ethel, the youngest, was 10 when her brothers went to war.
‘‘The letters have been treasured,’’ Hutchinson said.
Her mother, Isobel Corbin, Ethel’s daughter, said the reason keep
so much had been kept was because they were a family of hoarders.
With gentle hands mother and daughter, together with Hubber’s sisters Heather Molloy-Wilson and Helen Hubber, pick up the memorabilia and look at the beautiful cursive writing of letters, the black and white photographs and wartime records.
‘‘Mum always kept the letters in a box,’’ Molloy-Wilson said.
Everything went to
Hutchinson because she loved the genealogy, but she is not sure what will happen to it down the track.
‘‘It’s a bit of a worry actually,’’ Hutchinson said.
She is considering having it sent to a museum.
‘‘I’m actually quite concerned about them because they are 100 and something years old now. They’re not my property. They are all [my grandmother’s] letters.’’
Hutchinson has already begun transcribing the letters and has sent copies to the Auckland Museum Cenotaph.
‘‘Some of the letters are really quite poignant. The things they say about the Germans ... walking on the bodies. And these are letters being sent to a 10-year-old girl,’’ Hutchinson said.
In one of the treasured letters, Jim tells his little sister about the cold climate of France, seeing other men they knew, and how they are never in one place for long.
He asks if she received a photograph of a church, saying he was in the church when the Germans shelled it all day and ‘‘there were nothing but bricks flying’’.
Sadly he did not live to see the end of the war and his family was informed of his death while celebrating Armistice Day with a picnic.
Hutchinson is determined to have him and the others in her family who fought in the war remembered. And by reading through all their letters and having them transcribed is one way she is going about it.
JAMES WEIR WWII 23641, KILLED IN ACTION OCTOBER 23, 1918, AT LE CATEAU, FRANCE. A LETTER TO HIS SISTER ETHEL WEIR.
France, January 13, 1917 Dear Ethel,
Just a line to let you see I have got over Christmas alright ... One of my mates went for a bit of a stroll up in the trench yesterday and when he came back his dugout was missing, a big Jack Johnston [Jack Johnson was the largest shell used by the Germans. It measured about 17 inches and when it exploded it made a shell crater about 20 feet deep] had landed on top of it.
He was lucky to be just out of it. We thought he was covered up, and I was just making a start to dig him out when he comes along and asked us what we were doing.
It is quite a common thing to have to dig each other out at this game and dig each other in, also I dug quite a few Germans in up on the Somme but was not a bit particular in leaving their feet, or their heads sticking out. We used about a dozen to make up the trench to act as a shelter, one place we were in.
We felt it a bit walking on them for a start, but we soon got used to it.
I remain your [affectionate] brother James.
Aff