Dear Great Uncle Ett,

May I call you Ett? Your lovingly shortened given name of Edward Hugh seems to befit your place as the youngest of five. Your brothers, also, would have stood as you do, receiving letters, maybe even from yourself, whilst your sister eventually had to write an important letter on their behalf, about you.

Growing up in the Lodge of the big house where your father was employed as gardener, with ancestors who worked down the mines, you must have been thrilled to become an assistant librarian at the National Library of Wales. I wonder how you felt when you left to take up your place here, just before your eighteenth birthday. The surviving letters you wrote to Mr Ballinger, the Librarian there, give hints of excitement and nervousness at what may lie in store for you after your training.

Those letters tell also of their regard for you; of asking which gift they could send for joining the army; of your subsequent thanks for their gift of a watch and cigarette case; of one, dated exactly one month before your death, saying you had been in the front line trenches twice (‘it is not exactly paradise there’) and of going out for a ‘rest’ today. Then, sadly, the final one tells a little of the heartache there must have been at the Lodge as your sister, Blanche, wrote to Mr Ballinger on behalf of the family to thank him for their condolences.

I wish I could have met you. Your brother, Robert, (Bob – my Grandad), was the sweetest, gentlest, kindest man I have ever known and I feel sure you would have been the same. No talk from him of the horrors you must both have endured. He had a wisdom, perhaps borne out of his wartime experiences. “Never cut what you can undo, Leila Olwen,” I remember him saying, in his lovely Welsh accent. Yet here we are, in times where people are still cutting and not undoing, creating more horrors for others. I want to say thank you to you, for being brave enough to do what you did and I want to apologise to you for having to give up your life. We have a collective responsibility for the world. I will try to do justice to your sacrifice by doing my best to make it a better place, full of the love which so obviously surrounded you.

Lots of love

Leila

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