Letter to wife from the 1914 trenches to be auctioned

[ian turner]

As bitter enemies shook hands, swapped presents - and even played football - in the famous Christmas Day truce of 1914, a suspicious young captain stayed behind in his waterlogged trench and wrote to his wife.

"I don't trust 'em a yard," wrote Reg Hobbs of the Germans as they sang carols with his men in the icy mud of No Man's Land.

"I thought they must be up to some game," he wrote to his wife Cissie - "my own darling gal" - on that memorable day 93 years ago.

Today the poignant, mud-spattered and previously unpublished letter from Capt Hobbs surfaces at auction for the first time.

The letter - headed "Xmasday 1914" and bearing the jokey address of "Little Grey Home, Watery Lane" - is being sold by his daughter to save it from being thrown away after her death.

Mrs Sandy Walford, 89, of Richmond, south west London, said: "My father survived

the Somme and the rest of the war with just a piece of shrapnel in his side and an injured finger.

"He was an Old Contemptible and never talked about the war. The only thing he ever said to me about it - and it still moves me now - is: 'There was a tremendous love for one another in the trenches'".

Capt Hobbs, of the 2nd Monmouthshire Regiment and who was born in the grounds of Monmouth Castle, birthplace of Henry V, continues his letter to Cissie, three days after Christmas Day: "I meant to have finished this and posted it Xmas Day but I was stopped by being informed that about 100 Germans had got out of their trenches in front of my company.

"They exchanged cigarettes and souvenirs and then they all went back and so did our chaps. It was a most peculiar sight I can assure you and I don't expect you will believe me but it is an honest fact Cissie."

The five-page letter has been afforded a modest £400 to £800 estimate by Bonhams - but in keeping with other Western Front diaries which have surfaced in recent months, it is expected to fetch much more.

[SPotter]

Even with the Xmas 1914 connection, as a letter from someone who didn't even take part, and describing a very short contact with the Hun, I would be surprised to see it go anywhere the top-end estimate. Then again, maybe not - but you certainly wouldn't catch me putting my hand in my pocket for even a quarter of that.

Steve

[DaveNich]

It was reported in the Wesern Mail on the 28th March that the letter was sold for £2,760 to an anonymous telephone bidder.

Not a bad price

Regards

Dave

[SPotter]

Gosh

[Coldstreamer]

Ive a letter written to a casualty, the writer became a casualty and an officer wrote on the letter after , and he became a casualty

Id swap that for £2760 - straight away