"It’s difficult to say ‘thy will be done’, but God plans all these things for the best, so I must be brave, along with other mothers and wives, who have lost in this dreadful war.” So wrote Bessie Walker of York in November 1918. Her husband of only six weeks had died in the final weeks of the First World War, one of the 11 million servicemen on all sides to lose his life.
The letter is one of 120 discovered at Ormesby Hall, Middlesbrough, and newly published through a partnership between Teeside University and the Heritage Lottery Fund. They were addressed to Mary Pennyman, secretary of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers widows and orphans fund, in response to letters of condolence to the regiment’s bereaved wives and mothers.
