My wife’s paternal grandmother, Grace, was known to the family as Nanna. She was a truly remarkable woman. Born the daughter of an Essex shopkeeper towards the end of the 19th century, she became a teacher by means of a correspondence course. Prior to that, she had run a horse-drawn taxi service into the local town. It was said that as a pupil teacher she was responsible for the education of teenage boys older than herself. She had three sisters but, during the First World War, lost both her brothers – Ernest and Norman. In the early years of the war she handed out white feathers to local men who had not joined up and told her granddaughter that she would do the same again should similar circumstances ever arise. She also started and maintained correspondence with a number of young men on active service during the war and the postcards which they sent to her in reply have survived – well over a hundred in total.

These postcards, which completely fill a shoebox, form a fascinating collection which includes a further 15 cards without writing on – probably sent with letters which have since been lost. Valuable as these cards are for their pictures alone, it is their ‘other sides’ which really whet the appetite of the social, family and military historian. Thanks to information gained from TheGenealogist website it has been possible to follow up the stories behind most of these invaluable survivals.

Four of the surviving written cards came from a bombardier called George Gibbs. His army number was 845223; he served in the Royal Artillery and signed up in the Midlands two years before the war. He was fairly easy to track down as he gave some of his details on one of the cards and Grace listed four addresses for him in a little booklet which (remarkably) has also survived. Two of these addresses were in England and two in France. The cards were fairly straightforward. On one he wished her a merry Christmas and on another he asked if she had gone back to work after the festive season. While in England he was stationed in Birmingham and Yorkshire – the latter was backed up by cards depicting the Spa Gardens at Ripon and the castle at Richmond. A later Christmas card seems to have been French in origin. Records reveal that Grimsby-born George did not survive the conflict. He was killed in action while on the Western Front with the 48th Division artillery in April 1917. He was 26 at the time of his death.

In her address book, Grace had six wartime addresses for Private LA Horne 11558 of the Royal Fusiliers plus a suggestion that there were at least nine more. These addresses confirm that he served in three battalions of the Fusiliers – the 3rd, 6th and 9th and also that he was based in Dover at one point and then in Malta. He served on the Western Front and there had spells in hospital in Rouen before returning to England and a hospital in Epsom. It is possible to link 13 of the cards to Leslie – six written and seven unwritten. On the written ones he signed himself variously LAH, LA Horne and simply ‘Arthur’. The earliest card is dated 3 August 1915 and came from Dover where he was ‘awaiting orders to proceed overseas’. This was followed by a woven card depicting ‘9th Royal Fusiliers in France’ posted on 18 January 1916 followed by one on 3 February noting that he was ‘quite well’. One from FPO 33 dated 15 February thanked Grace for ‘cigarettes and chocolates’ as he remarked that he was ‘in the trenches’ and ‘getting plenty of shelling’. His surviving service records suggest that he disembarked in France for the first time in June 1915 and his name and number appear in The Times on a wounded list placed on 8 March 1916. He may also have been granted a silver badge at one point. Censuses suggest that he was born in 1894 and lived and worked in the East End of London as a hosiery assistant. His father was a master baker and later a tea salesman. Records at TheGenealogist reveal a man of Arthur’s name and age died in London in 1946.

Six further cards can be attributed to one LSE Akehurst 27831 ‘no. 2 Coy. 7th Platoon 13th Royal Fusiliers who appears twice in Nanna’s address book – once with the BEF in Belgium and the other at Halfway Cottage, East Dean Road, Eastbourne. Here it can be seen the advantage of a full military address as it gives us a real idea of where a soldier was serving right down to the level of platoon (somewhere in the region of 50 men). All in all Les’s cards are quite informative. The earliest card is dateable to 1915 when he sent a card with a Southampton postmark and a Belgian stamp. The picture on the front was of Anvers Cathedral and the writing suggested that it was Easter Sunday and he was expecting to ‘go north soon’. A birthday card with ‘Darlings and God Bless’ was sent to her soon after. The remaining four cards appear to have been written about the time of his demobilisation and are quite romantic (one starts ‘Dearest Sweetheart Grace’). There are also signs that they have met up at some point (‘the pleasure of meeting up again’). The last surviving one is from October 1919 when he notes ‘I am demobbed’. Just prior to this, Grace has been sending him letters and it would seem that Les was very keen in carrying on the relationship.

All we know is that this did not happen! Perhaps the theme of one cartoon postcard – ‘things are not so black as they seem’ – may indicate the way things finally went. Chasing up Leslie Stephen Edward Akehurst on TheGenealogist posed no problem. He was born the son of a farm carter, in 1897 and was living in cottages close to Eastbourne in 1901 and 1911. His wartime records also came up trumps. His medal roll index shows that he served in various battalions of the Royal Fusiliers; a list of wounded for October 1917 has him by name and number. Finally a message placed in the Edinburgh Gazette (see www.thegazette.co.uk) by the War Office in June 1919 shows that he (in the 13th Battalion from Eastbourne) was awarded a Military Medal.

Last – but far from least – comes the collection of more than 70 cards sent to Nanna by ‘Rob’. The modern family knew about the existence of Rob and that Rob and Grace had had a close personal friendship. A number of addresses in her address book show that he served in the 65th Division and was on the HQ staff for the division’s artillery column. More than 60 of the cards came from Ireland – a few from Ballincollig near Cork, a few more from the Curragh in Dublin and over 30 from Dundalk now in the far north of the republic. It was remarkably easy to discover how they met as a history of the division suggests that its second line unit was set up in Central Scotland and moved to the Chelmsford area where Grace lived in July 1916. From there it moved to Ireland in January 1917 and remained there until disbanded in the early months of 1918.

The first few cards come from 1916 when they were ‘seeing each other’. One is from Liverpool in January 1917 when he was on the move. The order of the rest seems to have been Dundalk, Curragh and Ballincollig, with the last one dated early 1918. Unfortunately many of the dates on the stamps are blurred.

The early ‘Essex cards’ suggest that when they met they did so possibly at church in Chelmsford but certainly ‘on the same old corner’ when he was not ‘on guard’. Later cards suggest that a ‘kiss’ and a ‘cuddle’ were involved from time to time. The train journey to Ireland via Crewe was ‘dreary’ and once there his job was clearly transporting ammunition for the artillery from place to place. The army itself was in Ireland to see there was no unrest after the Rising of 1916 and also to keep a watch on the ports. In the Dundalk letters he noted that he was ‘up and down the country’ and at one point tried to get on a trip to Ripon where he hoped for a meeting with Grace. He was unsuccessful. He complained frequently about the cold and wrote that he often visualised ‘the old corner’. On one card he mentioned the air raids on London and hoped that they had had no effect on nearby Chelmsford. On another he refers to being confined to barracks on account of ‘bother’ with ‘Fenians’ at Cork on the previous night. The routine was humdrum and included inspections and route marches.

When he moved to the Curragh in late 1917, he found himself often on escort duty, taking ammunition across to Galway. On one such trip, disaster struck – ‘very sorry to tell you that I have had an accident after leaving Dublin … my horse took fright with a motor and threw me off and I have a sprained arm and bruised fingers’. Later correspondence suggests that he enjoyed a swift and full recovery.

His cards were often very loving and romantic and on one occasion he wrote ‘I will think of you singing and playing the piano’. He must have met her brother Norman as he often inquired after him and his progress with the Essex Regiment. Once he wrote, ‘I am sorry to hear that Norman has gone up to the firing line – may God be with him’. Norman died in action in May 1918.

By the time Rob arrived at Ballincollig he was clearly becoming increasingly fed up and miserable. ‘Nothing but inspections and journeys in this ragtime mob’, he wrote on one card. He came close to a trip to war-torn Italy but was taken off the draft at the last minute. While in Ballincollig, he had 13 teeth removed in three sessions – large removals like this were fairly common in the early 20th century. Then suddenly in 1918 (probably around the time the brigade was disbanded), the cards stop. What appears to be the last surviving one notes ‘I don’t know what you think of me I’m sure you see me very cool with my letters now but really I can’t help it’ and ‘roll on duration’. Rob’s name never appears again in Grace’s notebook.

So who was Rob and want happened to him? The answer is that we are not certain. He was Welsh and often put little loving notes on cards in his native language. He also referred to his home in Denbigh and his dear old mother. In addition we have full details of his rank, number and regiment but none of his wartime records appear to have survived. Until fairly recently we thought that he was a Robert James or Robert John Williams as he was often referred to as Robert J. However it would seem that we (and online transcribers) were fooled and the J is, in fact, an old fashioned T. A Robert Thomas Williams lived with his widowed mother at Post Office Yard in Denbigh in 1901 and 1911 and signed the 1911 census for the family. We are fairly convinced that the signature on the census return is the same as the writing on the neatest of his cards. If this was indeed Rob he was somewhat older than Grace (born 1883 – she in 1893), widowed and working as an engine cleaner. No family story or surviving war record suggests that he went into action and was killed. Such was Grace’s thoroughness that she would have noted it somewhere if it were the case. However she does note that a card to Rob was sent early in 1918 – and that was it. Certainly Les seemed to be in with a chance later in the year. As it happens it was local man and ex-PoW Fred from a farm down the road who eventually caught her eye and became my wife’s grandfather. I was fortunate enough to meet both Fred and Grace.

I have no doubt that there are many readers who would get an enormous amount of pleasure and knowledge from merely examining the hundred-plus cartoons, photographs, rhymes, songs and military memorabilia on the front of the cards. A few of them are reproduced here (the Easter Rising one is apparently rare) but for me it will always be ‘the other side’ that intrigues – and, indeed, informs.