First world war soldiers' undelivered letters home come to light at last

Letters judged unsuitable to give to families were stored with dead soldiers’ wills and have now been made available online

On 6 August 1914, just two days after Britain declared war on Germany, Joseph Ditchburn, a private in the Durham Light Infantry, wrote an impeccably neat letter to his mother headed “no address”: he was 19, still in barracks in England, and just about to make a momentous journey.

“I am preparing to move to the front, and I am only sorry that I did not see you all before I went but then mother dear do not lose heart I may come back again.”

The fearful “may” is the telling word: his letter was one of those the troops were encouraged to write and keep in their pocket books with their wills, so that if the worst happened – and for appalling numbers it would – they could be sent home.

But he had said too much, and his mother never got the letter.

The historian Jon Cooksey, editor of Stand To!, the journal of the Western Front Association, believes the details Ditchburn innocently betrayed, including the date his regiment moved to the front, and the faltering morale he reported so honestly, meant it was censored and stored with his will instead of being posted.

Thousands more judged equally unsuitable can now be read for the first time by descendants of the soldiers. The last letters have resurfaced among 278,000 first world war English and Welsh soldiers’ wills – those of officers and Scottish and Irish soldiers are archived separately – at Iron Mountain, a high-security storage centre on the outskirts ofnear Birmingham.

From Thursday they will be available online, through a joint project by the storage firm and Her Majesty’s court and tribunal service: anyone can search the index by name, date or regimental number, and then pay a statutory £6 fee for a copy of any will. Iron Mountain has digitised everything in each record, so any letters, and the official envelopes recording the date and cause of death, will also be supplied.

Cooksey knew the wills survived, but had no idea that so many of the last letters were stored with them, and regards them as a priceless resource. He has already tracked the grandfather of Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, and discovered that he did not die in a futile assault on the Turkish lines at Gallipoli, as the rock musician believed, but months later in a Maltese hospital of dysentery. He has also found Albert Butler, who gave his occupation as “professional footballer” when he enlisted – he had played for first Reading and then QPR – left everything to his wife Kate, and died perhaps mercifully after his left leg was blown to pieces: “bad, no more football for me” he said to the chaplain, who later wrote to the widow.

The simple wills, which were legally accepted without being witnessed, were essential because the War Office knew the casualties would be huge.

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