HEART-RENDING accounts of war-torn history are revealed in letters penned by a teenage soldier to his mother just hours before he was killed.
Anxiously awaiting the battle to come, 19-year-old ensign Samuel Barrington sent notes to his home in County Durham.
In hand-written letters, the brave young soldier, who had been an officer in the 1st Foot Guards for barely a year, talks of his men being in “high spirits”, playing cricket as well as preparing for the fight.
He also speaks of his fears, but tells Elizabeth Adair that he hopes to write again soon.
“I have nothing to say for myself, but that I am as well and happy as ever I was in my life and if I escape with a whole skin, shall think myself well off and be thankful.
“If on the contrary some unlucky ball finishes me, I trust I shall not be wholly unprepared to face danger and death.”
Like all the letters in historian Sian Price’s new book If You’re Reading This... it is a poignant and heartbreaking reminder of the horrors of war.
Less than 24 hours later, on June 16 1815, Samuel Barrington was dead, shot in the head whilst urging his men forward at the Battle of Quatre Bras.
Two days later and less than eight miles from where Barrington fell, Wellington’s forces defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.
Ms Price spent three years trawling museums, libraries and archives across the globe and read 30,000 letters, which were whittled down to the experiences of 70 men – three from County Durham – for her new book.
It covers a 300-year period, with the most recent North East entry from the Second World War. Born to a Polish father, Major Lionel Wigram grew up to attend Oxford University and become a successful solicitor in London’s Mayfair.
A territorial officer in the London Regiment the father of three was, in December 1941, appointed commander of a newly established central Home Forces Battle School at Barnard Castle, County Durham, where he was instrumental in an overhaul of army training.
With a desire for ‘real’ training, the men under his guidance learned battle tactics using live ammunition, smoke and practiced amidst the loud chaotic scenes they would experience on the front line.
Wigram, who was Jewish, also hated the Nazis and instilled in his men a feeling of revulsion towards the enemy.
Initially the major only went to a battle zone as a War Office observer during the Sicilian campaign, but in 1943 he took command of a company in the 6th Royal West Kents.
Throughout August 1943 Wigram and his men had great successes, capturing the fortress of Centurife during a night attack and taking control of another town atop a steep rockface. Confident and full of bravado, Wigram’s chief complaint was mosquito bites. During it all he wrote back to his beloved wife Olga, whom he called “Cuddle”.
In the letter delivered after his death, shot in the village of Cisterna, he talked of his dreams for his children whom he hoped would become a lawyer, an Oxbridge don and a good wife, and said he hoped his wife would manage on the money he left.
“We’ve had a lot of fun together and I have no regrets,” he wrote. “XXXX For You, XXXX For the big ones, XXXX For the little ones, Bogul.”
But not all of the letters contained in the book are from men who died.
In 1900, during the Boer War, the Deputy Assistant Adjutant General of the Royal Artillery, John Headlam, who grew up near Bowes, County Durham, wrote to his wife in case he did not survive the Battle of Poplar Grove.
“Now sweetheart, goodbye for the present. If it comes to hand fighting later, I hope I shall not disgrace you and you will know darling that if anything happens to me, I thought of you and loved you to the last,” he wrote.
Thankfully, the Durham man survived the conflict in southern Africa, went on to attain the rank of major general during the First World War and was knighted before retiring in 1921. He died in 1946.
