SOLDIERS THINK OF IMPORTANT THINGS THAT KEEP HIM GOING IN BATTLE
*His fellow soldiers
*His family
*The letters
The messages in a soldier’s letters sent home to family during war can trace common themes of heartache and loss over 300 years of history and nine major conflicts, from the Napoleonic Wars to Afghanistan today.
The following is an excerpt written to a soldier’s father:
“It is easy to meet an enemy face to face, and to laugh him to scorn, but the unseen enemies Hardship, Anxiety, and Despair are a very different problem. You have held the family together as few could have done.”
~ Michael Andrew Scott, 1916-1941 killed over English Channel
This reminds me reminds me of my great grandmother Amelia who cared for our father’s 4 younger siblings after his father’s heart attack in March, 1943. Dad’s mother died when Dad was only 12, his father when he was age 19 and in training to be sent overseas. My grandfather’s dying request to my father was to promise that the family be kept together. He kept that promise.
Sometimes the letters are very flowery and poetic, others are humourous or even quite flippant, as is sometime the case in my father’s letters in COMES A SOLDIER’S WHISPER. Wars come and go. But we must never let our guard down by maintaining a strong military. And so it goes, that soldiers will always be sent to new battle campaigns, only to experience what their brothers in arms have lived through before them.
Contemplating the possibility of not making it through war sometimes forces a soldier to say things they might not normally express in their wildest dreams. The hardest ones to read are the ones written by young men who never made it back, who are full of exuberance and confidence and never really believed they might be killed. Letters are treasured by the families and passed down for generations.
Remember to thank a soldier today and everyday.
COMES A Soldier’s Whisper
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Text Source: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094898/Heartbreaking-letters-frontline-
