Words that became verse • 1914–1945
In the trenches, on the home front, in the ghettos and the prison camps — love and war forged language into poetry. These letters read like verse, their words carrying the rhythm of heartbreak, the cadence of courage, and the rhyme of remembrance.
Lieutenant Colin Simper had never held his baby son Douglas when he wrote this letter from the jungles of Borneo. He was killed eight days later, trying to save a wounded mate.
Second Lieutenant Haruo Araki married his childhood sweetheart at 11 PM and had four hours with her before flying his final mission. He was 21 years old.
Bostonian James O'Sullivan fell in love with a French girl while training. He wrote proposing marriage. She received his letter the same day his commanding officer's letter arrived — he had died at the Argonne. She kept both in a locket for 70 years.
Written on Christmas Eve during one of the coldest winters of the war. Friedrich describes the unofficial ceasefire and the carols drifting across no man's land.
Captain Harry Cromie was too shy to propose when he saw Vera on leave. He wrote her a letter on the eve of battle: 'By this you will know that I have been killed. I meant to ask you to be engaged to me but when I was on leave I was too frightened to say anything — I loved you very very much.' He was killed 13 days later.
Written on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, this letter was found in William's tunic pocket after he fell on the first day of battle.
Besieged and starving in the ancient city of Kut, Havildar Amar Singh writes to his wife Priya in the hills of Kumaon, knowing this letter may never reach her. It was found among the debris of the garrison after the surrender.
Frederick Key wrote 42 letters and 15 postcards to his beloved Zen Hall. This was his last — written on Valentine's Day 1916. He died on the first day of the Somme. She wrote in her diary: 'Letter came saying my darling killed... went to Lichfield.'
A French soldier's letter to his sweetheart, written before the Second Battle of Ypres. Jean-Luc was a poet before the war.
A classics professor from Heidelberg — a man who taught Homer and Goethe — volunteers for war and writes to his wife from Flanders. He was killed at Langemarck, one of the 'Kindermord' — the Massacre of the Innocents.
A French farmer conscripted in August 1914 writes to his wife of two months on the eve of the First Battle of the Marne. He died the next day.