Transcript of a WWI letter originally published in Cobourg World, Walter Sutton, Colborne, Cramahe Township

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Newspaper

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Correspondence

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Copied from The Canadian Letters & Images Project

Cobourg World Letter: 1917 February 23rd
Date: February 23rd 1917
From: Walter Sutton

"Just a few lines to let you know that things are all well with me. I suppose I must explain the unusual delay in not having any letters. Well it was this way. I knew we were going in to an attack. What day, we did not know, so I thought I would wait until after the charge, and if everything went all right I would then write. Our charge was on the 17th of January and since then we have moved back for rest. To tell the truth, I have been too cold the last few days to do anything and it was impossible for us to write letters. To-night we are in a small French house and they have kindly given us three tables for our own use. Wish you could have seen the sight the boys made when going over that morning. We had about six inches of snow the day before and it was still snowing when we left our trenches at 8 o'clock a.m. Our artillery opened fire at the same time at 1,000 rounds a minute. We had to lie down in 'No Man's Land' for three minutes. Then entered their front line as soon as the fire raised over their second line. The guns continued on their second line for another fifteen minutes, leaving us that much time to clean out the first line. Then the fire lifted to their third line. This time giving us thirty-five minutes to clean out their second line. We succeeded in getting through with very few casualties and inflicting many among their rank and file. We captured three machine guns, two bomb-throwing machines, and 153 prisoners including a company commander.

Their Battalion commander was killed. So taking it on the whole we had a successful day of it."

--- Colborne Express.

See external links on the right of this record for original source.

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Copied from The Canadian Letters & Images Project

"Cobourg World
This collection contains nearly 300 letters from World War One published in The Cobourg World, a local newspaper published in Cobourg, Ontario. Newspapers across Canada regularly printed letters home from overseas, either letters written directly to the newspaper by the soldiers, or first written to the family and then contributed to the paper by the family. Collections such as those from The Cobourg World provide a fascinating look at the relationship of community and war as played out in the pages of the local newspaper. All letters in the collection have been previously published in the newspaper and were also later collected by local historian Percy Climo in a work entitled "Let Us Remember". The dates for which the letters are listed represent the dates on which they were published, as the original dates of the letters are not always indicated. Where the original date of writing is known it will be part of the letter text. Introductions to the letters and editorial comments as they appeared in the newspaper have been left as published. All transcriptions have been taken from copies on microfilm and as such there are no scans for this collection."

Date of Original