Letters from War
Despite not enjoying my own time in military service, I’m a huge military history fan. My initial interest as a kid was first in weaponry, which then grew to tactics and strategy. For the past year or two, my field of interest has shifted to the personal lives and experiences of leaders/commanders, the common soldier and their significant others and that of the civilian during times of war.
While reading autobiography which largely consists of the account of an individual named Erwin Rosen, who enlisted into the French Foreign Legion during the early 1990s [Book title: 'In The Foreign Legion' by Erwin Rosen], I was sidetracked and chanced upon an archive of letters sent during war times, namely the first and second World War, http://www.war-letters.com/. The site is absolutely fantastic, with scanned originals and text transcribed versions of a large number of letters sent to/from the common soldiers who participated in these wars. It was a huge insight to be privileged to the thoughts of these people, who mostly were in a war they’d rather not be in, and want nothing more than to be reunited with their loved ones, and also their thoughts on the day to day routines.
Seems strange that someone who is anti-war like myself would love military history, but is only from understanding the experiences of people who were caught in them can we understand how they have felt, and how truly terrible a thing war is.