Son to receive WWI love letters

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/7734533.stm

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Love letters exchanged between a a Gloucestershire couple during World War I are to be returned to their elderly son, who did not know they existed.

Jim Martin, a private in the Gloucestershire Regiment, wrote dozens of letters from the trenches to his 17-year-old bride Eleanor, known as Cis.

They were written on postcards and discovered in a Cambridgeshire junk shop by new owner Elizabeth Foster.

Son Roy Martin, 88, said the war years were never spoken of.

"Occasionally, he told me when he was in the trenches, life wasn't very comfortable," he said.

Mr Martin said the war years were never spoken of

"Apart from that, it was a subject to be forgotten."

In one letter Mr Martin writes: "It may seem strange Cis but our chaps do not feel in least afraid when we go in the trenches and find ourselves only a few yards from the enemy."

Ms Foster, who found the letters in a junk shop in Ely, said: "I think he was trying to reassure her.

"He didn't want her to worry about him.

"I could see this man was deeply in love with this woman and I hoped that he had survived the war, I wanted to find out."