that the women of France are working with the women of England to protest against the war. Part of that protest is to communicate openly. To be able to tell the real truth without fear of censorship. It is a huge risk for both of us to communicate in this way, but I for one think it is worth it. I will understand if you do not wish to correspond with me in this way. Of course I hope that you do.
If you do decide the risk is worth taking then please write to me care of the address I have provided above. However, as you will have gathered this is no ordinary postal service. The woman who passed this letter to you will have given you some contact details. Needless to say the names they give are fake and hopefully difficult to trace. If you pass a letter you have for me to your contact then she will make sure that it goes through this wondrous secret network and make its way across the channel to me.
If you do decide that you will kindly continue to write to me please, please be careful. Please do NOT mention any names in your letters, so that if they are intercepted we cannot be identified. Just use initials to speak of people, as I have done, and I will know who they are. It is probably best not to mention too many place names either. Nothing that means they could easily trace us.
I have become very aware of the fact that what I was writing before was drawing attention to myself. I think, in retrospect, I was being foolish and risking us both. I know this now and I am sorry.
Back at the end of June, that bastard Colonel C---- took me in for questioning about it. He sat behind his desk in one of the dugouts while I stood to attention for an hour; the cold sweat of summer nerves on my brow and spine. He had typed copies of our letters scattered over the rough planking of his desk. I couldn't believe it. To think that they would go to the trouble of employing someone to type out our every word in some underground office in Whitehall. Just to weed out the pacifists and the unpatriotic? I suppose that is how they have controlled us for so many years. With fear and deception and by removing those who ask difficult questions. Just to maintain their lies.
I wonder about those typists and censors. They too must be ordinary women. They too must have husbands and sons who have died. Can they really, truly believe in what they are doing? I can only suppose that they are well paid to keep to the official secrets act. That or they live in real fear like the rest of us. A whole nation of fear.
Colonel C---- asked me questions about you, your family and my mother. It was dreadful. Such probing questions about whether we were pacifists and how he didn't like the unpatriotic tone of our letters. He even quoted our letters; things about how you had described yourself as a 'pacifist' and how I had implied that I was the 'brother in arms' to the Hun soldiers. He said I might as well be 'Fritz' in disguise. Kept calling me 'Fritz' with that sneering sarcasm of breeding; 'Private Fritz F----', 'Fritz the Hun sympathiser', things like that. So humiliating, as, I suppose, it was designed to be. He said we were both traitors to the Empire. There were lots of threats to me, and my love, he threatened your family. Implied that they might be watching you and yours. So you need to be so very careful. He even said that men had been shot for less in the past but, as ever, the fact that manpower is short in this war has saved me. For now at least.
I tried not to say much as he questioned me, and in truth, I don't exactly have much to say. He asked me about the 'unpatriotic scum women' who made plots. The implication was that my mother was one of them, though he stopped short of saying that outright. I told him that I knew nothing about it, which is true, but that made him even more perturbed so he brought in one of his lackeys, a man in clean plain uniform with no insignia or rank.
This man was a brute. Shaved head and a thick neck. He stood in front of me with a thin piercing look about an inch from my face, his brow bunched with hate. The tiny black dots in his eyes made me squint with fear. I could feel his wet breath on my chin and I suppose I must have been shaking. His stubbly beard seemed to visibly bristle in front of my eyes.
C---- asked me again what I knew about these women and I said again that I knew nothing. It was then that the brute punched me. His frown didn't move as he did it; fixed expression of routine hate. The punch so hard in my stomach that I doubled and couldn't breath. The next thing I knew I was on the floor and he was kicking me with his heavy black boots, in the same hollow space of my stomach. I can still see the shine on those boots in my mind, as if this soldier was from a different world, a world with no mud and grime. Tears sprang involuntarily and my mind span with the choking pain of it. C---- must have asked me more questions, but I really can't remember. I know there was more kicking and punching and I think I threw up my porridge.
In the end I suppose C---- eventually decided I didn't know anything after all, or perhaps I wasn't worth it. Or maybe he had better things to do. So they dragged me out of there and left me comatose. Later I awoke, dizzy with pain, lying on a shallow bunk in a locked room of Colonel C----'s dugout, the blanket encrusted with some other poor bugger's blood.
When I think about that beating now I realise how careful and controlled it was. The lackey with the shaved head knew exactly how to extract pain but not damage my body so much that it was no longer useful or productive. No blows to the face or limbs, nothing broken. My body is a commodity for them to use at their whim, and if my mind seems to not comply then they know exactly how to manipulate it. Or at least try to. Although, at the end of the day, they don't have to try that hard because they know that I have no choice but to do what they order. The only choice we have is to live or die. Thompson chose the latter.
After a while the M.P.s came and took me away. They confiscated most of my personal possessions, which is why this letter is written in pencil. Strange how sad I felt to lose my precious fountain pen and my last couple of bottles of ink. I imagine that snake Colonel C---- has it right now; tucked in his battle-dress tunic pocket. The thought taunts me. I also find it strange that although I feel such venom for him I know, deep down, that I would not actually wish him any harm. I simply do not understand how men like him can exist. How can he exist when he knows his actions have meant that so many innocent men have gone to miserable pointless deaths? He must know the truth of this. Inside. He is only in such a position of power because of an accident of birth. I sometimes wonder what I would have been like if my family had been one of those privileged few in the upper classes. Would I have been such a callous uncaring officer? I don't honestly know the answer.
Perhaps Colonel C---- assuages any guilt he might feel by claiming to himself that he is merely following orders. If he does then this is a terribly poor excuse; I have done terrible things myself, simply because I was ordered to. Perhaps I will again. And I will have to live with that somehow and I suppose he will also have to live with himself and his sins, especially when his time comes. Will he repent on his deathbed? I know I ask for forgiveness for my sins, despite not being a man of religion.
I have tried to use the excuse of 'simply following orders' to assuage my own guilt for the murderous things I have done. But it is an excuse that doesn't work, not really, if one thinks about it properly. In no way does it make one feel better. I suppose this is why so many men turn to drink or other things to block it out. To try not to think about it properly. I wonder if Colonel C---- sleeps at night without the comfort of spirits.
So unfortunately because of him I no longer have my pen, the Dickens book or your precious picture. I did however manage to keep your letters hidden away; some between my socks, deep in my boots and the rest stitched into the lining of my jacket. I couldn't bear to be parted from your words. Those M.P.s didn't search me that well. I could tell they didn't care; it was just another dirty job that had to do.
Losing my possessions however was not the worst part. Nor was the beating I took. The real punishment was that they sent us for concrete duty on the Wall. Not just me but Sapper J---- and H---- too, although I don't know why they had to punish them as well. I suppose they felt that my closest pals were tainted by my 'unpatriotic fervour' - this is
what Colonel C---- called it. I felt such guilt. H---- simply said that he had been expecting that they would do something like that to him, rather than retiring him. J---- though was less forgiving and refused to talk to me.
We were sent back into the depths of the Wall, along with several other men from the regiment. All of us branded as cowards or shirkers or those attempting to desert. The unpatriotic Hun sympathisers.
As we marched, herded by Military Police with bayonets fixed, through the trenches and over the gang-planks of Ypres, it was obvious for all to see who we were. We weren't prisoners exactly, still serving soldiers at the beck and call of our masters, but everyone recognises the pathetic march of the newest recruits to concrete duty. I have watched it myself so many times before. Soon the humiliating jeers of the common soldiers rang out all around us. Their jeers and taunts are not so much to punish us; they seem more like a jarring song that cries 'there but for the grace of God go I!'
I tried to keep my head held high but couldn't help but have a snivelling tear. It all felt so inevitable and pointless.
The concrete teams work on the Wall for