Harry Lamin, a British soldier who endured the horrors of
life in the
trenches of the Western Front in World War I, was one of
the world's first
citizen reporters. His homely despatches are now being
posted on the Internet,
exactly 90 years after he wrote them.
His letters to his family, posted one at a time, read
like a serial
cliffhanger, causing thousands of present-day Internet
surfers worldwide
to worry about his welfare. "Where is he?" one
frantic viewer
wrote a few days ago. "What's happened? I need the
next letter! Is he
dead? Is he alive? It's been eight days and no word from
him!"
Three years ago, Bill Lamin, now 59, an information
technology teacher
living in Cornwall, England, read a bundle of letters his
grandfather,
Private Harry Lamin, had written from the western front
in 1917-18. He
sorted them into chronological order, and just one year
ago began posting
them as a blog. which has
attracted more than a million hits.
Bill rightly says, "What has been produced is
a moving and poignant
account of an ordinary man's experiences in an
extraordinary situation. I
have edited nothing. The spellings and grammar are
exactly as Harry wrote
them."
Harry was conscripted in 1917, at the age of 30, and
served with the York
and Lancashire Regiment. He survived historic and bloody
battles including
Messin
es Ridge
and Passchendaele,
which are still remembered for the appalling loss of
lives of soldiers
fighting on both sides.
"It is a rum job waiting for the time to go over the
top - and
without any rum too," Harry commented in one letter.
On June 11,
1917, he wrote to his brother Jack about the battle of
Messines Ridge.
"We have had another terrible time this week the men
here say it was
worse than the Somme
advance last July. We lost a lot of men but we got
where we were asked
to take. It was awful I am alright got buried and knocked
about but quite
well now and hope to remain so."
"We were praised by the general and all, everybody
said we had done
well, quite a success. I will tell you more when I see
you."
Today, hundreds of thousands of web surfers are anxiously
waiting to learn
whether Harry was wounded or killed in the closing stages
of the war, when
he was stationed in Italy.
Grandson Bill is keeping that secret, letting readers
share the anxiety
the family must have suffered while awaiting another
letter from Harry...
or a fateful telegram from the War Office.
On a happier note, here's a letter Captain Charles S.
Normington, a
24-year-old American World War I soldier, wrote from
Paris to his parents
on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918. His daughter, Lois
Haugner, of Appleton,
Wisconsin., recently posted
it on the Internet.
Dear Folks:
Arrived here last night, and was on the street today
when the armistice
with Germany was signed. Anyone who was not here can
never be told, or
imagine, the happiness of the people here. They cheered
and cried and
laughed and then started all over again.
Immediately a parade was started on the Rue De
Italiennes and has been
going on ever since. In the parade were hundreds of
thousands of
soldiers from the U.S., England, Canada, France,
Australia, Italy and
the colonies.
Each soldier had his arms full of French girls, some
crying, others
laughing, each girl had to kiss every soldier before
she would let him
pass.
When those early citizen reporters Harry Lamin and
Charles Normington
wrote to their folks 90 years ago, they could not have
imagined their
letters would be read by countless netizens around the
world in 2008.
Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
Published 2008-05-18 09:17 (KST) in OhmyNews,
International Art & Life produced by the OhmyNews Journalism
School whose Syllabus states "Hundreds of people have learned
the theory and practise of citizen journalism (at) The school,
located in a small village on Kanghwa Island (south of Seoul),
offers numerous courses on journalism writing, digital media
techniques and writing practice, taught in Korean and English
by... (Todd Thacker)
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Private
Harry Lamin