Shortly after Christmas 1914, Bessie Eastment of Hardington received a letter from her husband, George, a soldier serving in France with the First Battalion of the Dorset Regiment.[1] After showing the letter to family and neighbours, Bessie sent it to the Western Gazette for publication.
George and Bessie married in 1911 when he was 27 and she was 35. They lived in the cottage on the west side of North Lane and had one daughter, Vera Rosalind. Bessie was proud of her husband, who was among the first to enlist and may have been in France as early as September 1914. At the same time, she must have been anxious for his safety. After all, he was a farm labourer more used to tending livestock than manning a frontline trench. As it turned out, George survived the war and lived until 1959.
George had penned his letter home while resting in a billet after front-line duty. He began by saying that he was in the best of health and that the army made him and his comrades as comfortable as possible. In addition to plenty of food (bully beef, biscuits, bread, tinned butter, jam and bacon), they had tobacco and cigarettes, and, at night, they received a drop of rum.
The weather was terrible, and the trenches were “over shoe in mud.” However, the army supplied them with fur coats, and they had “nice warm clothing from the good people at home.” He had a four-foot-long scarf knitted by a girl in Cornwall with a pinned note, saying, “I hope these things will fit you and the Germans will not get you.”
The bad weather was confining hostilities to trench warfare. The Germans occupied trenches about 200 yards away, with barbwire entanglements in front and heavy guns positioned on a hill to their rear. Their snipers were accurate and a constant menace.
Although George faced immense danger, he downplayed it, merely saying: “It makes one begin to think a bit when those big shells are bursting around you right and left and the bullets whistling over your head.”
George found some consolation in religion, saying they had “very nice services” and “nice hymns and tunes”.
He also mentioned that he had sent home his present from Princess Mary for safekeeping.
He finished by saying that they only needed two things: dry weather and Lord Kitchener’s Army. He then added a PS to explain why he had been sent to the front so soon. He said that he had volunteered for Lord Kitchener’s Army, but, as he had done three months before, he was put with the reserve and sent away with them.
George’s life after the war
The army discharged George on 14 August 1919.[2] In June 1921, he worked as a farm labourer for Arthur Edwards at Moor Farm.[3] In 1939, he was an “Aircraft Doper,” presumably at Westlands. An Aircraft Doper applied plasticised lacquer to fabric-covered aircraft. Towards the end of his life, he moved to 26 Lower Street, Merriott.[4] On 10 April 1959, he died at 207 St Michael’s Avenue, Yeovil, surviving his wife by less than a year.[5]
Princess Mary’s gift box
The photograph shows a Princess Mary Christmas gift box. Princess Mary was the seventeen-year-old daughter of George V. She wanted to send a gift to every soldier and sailor on active service on Christmas Day, 1914. It was impracticable for her to pay for this herself, so she lent her name to a public fund to raise the necessary money. The brass box was part of a package that included twenty cigarettes, an ounce of pipe tobacco, a Christmas card and a photograph of Princess Mary. The fund also produced a version for non-smokers and another for nurses.
George sent his box home for safekeeping, and it may survive; however, if it does, it is probably in America, as his daughter, Vera, and her husband, Frederick Brake, emigrated to San Diego, California, after the Second World War.
References
[1] Western Chronicle, 29 Jan 1915, p. 5.
[2] World War I Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923.
[3] RG15, piece 11308, schedule 52.
[4] National Probate Calendar.
[5] National Probate Calendar; Civil Registration Death Indexes.
