Revisiting World War One

Over the past year, I have been visiting occasionally the blog of Harry Lamin. Sorry, I don't know the man. I've never written to him too and I don't expect him to reply to my emails even if I write. You see, Harry Lamin is died. I don't know when he died but if he were still alive today, he would've been 120 years old.

So how is it that a man who would have been 120 years old today still be writing a blog, especially since he's dead?


Simple. His family unearthed a treasure of his letters and decided to publish them on the anniversary dates of them being written. His family also uncovered the letters from Harry's brother and sisters' families so more often than not, there is a complete trail of conversations through their letters.

Letters by themselves can be quite mundane but Harry Lamin's letters and that of his siblings were mundane at times. But what made them special was that they were all written during the days of the first world war. World War One. Private Harry Lamin was a conscripted soldier and he had been sent to the front line to fight the enemy. So through his letters, one gets to experience how difficult life was as a soldier. Harry Lamin had to balance his professional army career with his private life, and it wasn't easy.

When the letters were recovered, Harry Lamin's family thought it worth their while to reproduce them on the Internet as a blog. Though the letters were written a long time ago, they would be posted to the blog on their 90th anniversary dates. There'll be days or even weeks without entries simply because no one wrote any letter, and then there will be a flurry of activity.

I hope you'll enjoy Harry Lamin's World War One blog as much as I have.