Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
ON FROM THE ‘BATTLE OF MUD’...
him before his death. In it he is painfully cheerful, making light of the horrific conditions.
He writes: “So pleased to know all are well and are able to say the same of myself. The weather is nice here just now and things seem to be going fairly well.”
In a hint that Nellie had been desperate to see him home, he adds: “Send kisses for the dear boys and keep thinking of what I used to tell you about the wanting – but I am afraid that did not work out very well. With love, I remain your affectionate husband, Arthur.”
The next Nellie heard of him was from a nurse at his hospital bedside. Arthur had been taken to Etaples on October 4 “suffering from gunshot wound of back and abdomen” and a fractured arm.
The Sister writes: “He is in a very dangerous condition but I hope that in a day or two he will improve. I will let you know how he is. Believe me.”
Nellie begged the Home Office to let her travel to him. “Permisfrom sion was refused,” sighs Sue, 55. “It was too dangerous.”
Nellie could only wait for thin paper envelopes from a stranger. Then came the devastating news.
“He was conscious up towards the last few moments and the Chaplain had been with him,” the Sister writes. “He will be laid to rest here and will have a cross to mark his grave with his name on.”
His personal belongings that were sent home included a worn photo of Nellie, which Arthur always had with him.
Writing to Nellie from Egypt, where he was serving with the Royal Engineers, Arthur’s older brother Joseph said: “I cannot realise it can be right, that our dear one should be taken away. May we meet him in Heaven.”
The brothers were to meet sooner than expected – that was Joseph’s final letter, too. He died shortly after sending it. Nellie, of Sudbury, Middlesex, died in 1943 having never visited Arthur’s grave. Neither did her sons. Sue and her cousins are the first.
“It was very moving,” she says. “It’s a massive cemetery and they are buried in order of dying. It took a while to find him.
“There’s a Canadian soldier on one side, a New Zealander on the other. It brought home the international scale of it.” Today Sue will be in Ypres for the centenary.
She will visit nearby Polygon Woods, the spot where she believes Arthur sustained his injuries.
She says: “He was a hero. I just want to stand in the place he did what he did.”
Sue came forward through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s descendants ballot for today’s ceremonies.