Melksham Times Past

A column about days gone by in Melksham by local historian Lisa Ellis

Wartime letters to home

Do you have any letters to home that your ancestors had written during the war? They often reveal the conditions they faced and a little insight to family and friends.

Quoting an article from Wiltshire Times, published Saturday 12th June 1915, a letter written on 23rd May 1915 by George Sheppard to his mother from probably France; timing is about halfway through World War I:

“I am writing to let you know that I am all right and well, and glad that you are all the same. I received the tobacco quite safe. We have been here about 10 days. When this battle is finished we shall shift. I have seen some sights these last few days. I don’t think this will last much longer. You ask me if we had plenty of food. We get plenty of ‘bully’ and biscuits, and that is about all. We have not seen much bread lately. My mouth is quite sore biting them. They would be all right if they were not so hard. Tell Ruthey Fred will want some good teeth when he comes out here. You said you hope we should come home safe, all of us, but I don’t think there will be many men left to finish this. I expect the women will have to finish it. I have not seen Bert or Jim or Ern yet. What Division are they in? But we chaps have not got much time to look after them. Old Charley and I have just made a tin of tea, so we are doing well. He and I were in a very bad place the other day, so I looked at him and I said: ‘Charley, we have backed the winner this time.’ He said: ‘Looks like it.’ But thank God, we have got back all right.”

The people mentioned in the letter:

• Elizabeth (Shepperd/Flower) Sheppard – mother, living in Ganes Buildings, off Broughton Road at the time; married to Thomas Sheppard

• Ruth (Sheppard) Wiltshire – George’s sister, eight years younger; there were 11 children in the Sheppard family, one of whom had died in infancy

• Frederick George Wiltshire – Ruth’s husband; they married in 1912 (I have not found any military records for him but that doesn’t mean he didn’t serve). He and Ruth were living at 29 Scotland Road at the time; he worked for the Avon.

• Bert, Jim, Ern, Old Charley – I have a list of 289 people to sift through as having the name Bert, Jim, Ern or Charley. Too many assumptions to make to be accurate.

• George Frank Sheppard (author of the letter) – was a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery, 12th Battery. He was a hewer and collier but listed as unemployed after he returned from war. George married Lydia Daisy Young Harris in 1908; they separated not long after he returned from the war. Neither ever remarried. He died at the age of 66 in 1951.