I worked with Letter to an Unknown Soldier to create a digital memorial for WWI by asking people to write letters to the unknown soldier in Paddington Station. We had an astounding result–over 21,000 letters. And several of those were by my classmates, friends and family!
Similar to the daily featured letters on the website, I’ve gathered these letters together so that you can read them side by side. One of the fabulous things about this project is how the letters talk to each other—how they enter a dialogue together.
I hope that by reading the very different entries below, you’ll be encourage to think about your own response to the letters, to the soldier, and to war.
Military service is a pursuit where success is often measured in life and death.
I have to believe that in that moment, you were not alone. And I have to believe that in that moment that she heard you were missing, gone, forever, that she was not alone.
I hope you met each other again, far away from the battlefields you crossed together…
She can’t watch war movies or read war novels, and she shies away from war poetry because every word and image drips with her brother’s blood even though he sustained no wounds.
The shadow passes, my friend, your sacrifice, your valiant efforts, they are not in vain.
You asked me, “Oh sister, would you sit for a spell?
I’m fevered and pained; I can’t see very well –
But the blue of your dress, it’s caught in my eye
Like Beaumaris bay under Melbourne’s young sky.”
Are you going mental without someone to tell your stupid jokes to?
You fell asleep
before the fire
died. I bare my teeth
at the fire
but it lives
Storm took the old oak tree down last night. You remember that tree?
One hundred years ago today, what did you give up? An education? A career? A marriage? Perhaps a leg? Perhaps your very life?
By now we should know such a thing cannot exist. How can we have been so stupid to believe it? War breeds war.
I can still feel your sleeve in my fingers as I swore I would never let you go.
We cut our hair and bound our breasts,
Or treated the wounded and grabbed a gun to defend them in the chaos,
Or joined our sisters when we were not allowed to stand with our brothers,
Or took up weapons to defend our homes because our brothers were already dead.
You’ll slam that foot down, like a dog pissing on a tree, this is your ground; you won’t move.
But then you are probably used to the surprise after I gave you that feather. All those girls who had addressed you with one, and only mine could send you to war.
Somehow I feel better thinking that you might have them in your hands – instead of a gun.
p.s. I did two letters (shhh, I know) and here they are:
I lost my innocence in your memories.
Is it blasphemy to say:
One does not become a hero
simply by having died?
