Letters from the Front: From the First World War to the Present Day

Over the last 100 years the Imperial War Museum has been gathering together a collection of tens of thousands of letters and archives from British and Commonwealth troops serving on the front line, in conflicts from the First World War through to the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Revealing the most intimate details of the lives of these soldiers, this collection uncovers the startling similarities between the men fighting in the muddy trenches of the Somme, yomping across the frozen ground of the Falklands and carefully picking their way through the heat and dust of Afghan wadis. Love, Tommy is a selection of some of the most emotive of these letters. Correspondence which includes poignant expressions of love, hope and fear sit alongside amusing anecdotes, grumbles about rations and thoughtful reflections, all of which reveal how, despite the passage of time, many experiences of fighting men are shared in countless wars and battles.

Table of Contents:
Introduction World War I World War II Korea The Falklands Gulf War 1991 Iraq and Afghanistan

About the Author :
Andrew Roberts is the author of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900. His other books include Napoleon and Wellington, Eminent Chuchillians and Salisbury. His latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War won the British Army Military Book of the Year for 2010. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University and lives in New York City. IWM (Imperial War Museums) tells the stories of people who have lived, fought and died in conflicts involving Britain and the Commonwealth since 1914. Our unique collections reveal stories of people, places, ideas and events. IWMs five branches are IWM London, IWM’s flagship branch; IWM North; IWM Duxford; Churchill War Rooms; and the Second World War cruiser HMS Belfast.

Review :
"This book presents a moving (and historically valuable) selection of letters home." --Daily Mail (UK) "From a top World War II historian comes a delightful collection of correspondence by British soldiers, sailors, and aviators." --The Quarterly Journal of Military History (Winter 2013) "...provides a collection of original writings gathered by the Imperial War Museum from the last hundred years, revealing the daily lives of soldiers and offering comparisons between the experiences of those fighting different wars. From anecdotes and reflections on experiences to discussions of rations and expressions of love and fear, these capture the hopes, fears and struggles of the universal soldier no matter what the war, and are packed with solid reflections." --James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review (January 2013)