Unspoken Truth
Pandering Pandora
The old trunk had no intention of yielding its contents. None. Its camouflage was clear. Filth and grunge covered its surface. Rusty latches, a jammed lock, frozen hinges, faded labels spoke of abandonment, days forgotten. There is nothing for you here, it said to the passerby, when it talked at all. Stay Away! Keep Out! Just walk on. It had always worked. Shoved tightly back under the attic's eaves, the trunk survived, through the seasons, over the decades. The occasional child would appear, poking around. But the castle gates held. A small hand is no match against determined will. The trunk remained unscathed. Sometimes an adult would question this mangy box, but the trunk never worried. Man's curiosity waned long before its lock was jimmied. Fickle. Insolent. That was man. What demands attention today, vanishes tomorrow. Vagary. No, man was never a threat, until now. It felt the change. Had the day finally arrived? The trunk had always promised itself, for those who got too close, for those who dared reveal its secrets, these violators would suffer. Not a Pandora pandemic. Oh no, this would be far too comfortable. The world had plenty of those. No. The penalty would be harsher. Something eluding all reason. Something timeless, yet forever forgotten. The trunk felt a hand run across its top. A shadowy figure bent down and tugged on the latches, until they released. With a key, the figure released the tumblers, the hasp dropping from its berth. With one firm push, the lid lifted. The attic permeated with the trunk's aroma.
Union Jack, 6' x 10'. World War I. Katherine thought, Better in her hands than draped over a coffin.
The burden released. The underbelly revealed. Much rushed out. Past lives. Lessons learned, lessons lost. Memories cherished, moments forgotten. This violator would be sorry! Almost to the day, the trunk resurrected one hundred years from its beginning. Exposed to the world, it now released what it had always promised to man. The truth.
The Wolves of Wolverhampton
Leslie Cassin Pritchard was born, 1898, in Wolverhampton, England, son of Samuel and Katherine Pritchard. His destiny guided him to Canada, where, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the Canadian Forestry Corps (C.E.F.), Company 27. With the shadow of the Great War still hovering over Europe, Private Leslie Pritchard returned to England to serve under the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.). Danger was not isolated to the front. In January, 1918, he contracted pleurisy, but survived the setback. His second brush with eternity occurred in August, participating in the Second Battle of the Somme. By November, pneumonia welcomed him to Armistice Day. But Leslie played a good hand of cards. Post-war, he emigrated to the United States where he pursued a career with J. E. Caldwell & Company in Philadelphia as a salesman. In time he met Jane Walker Platt and a new life began for both of them.
Private Leslie Pritchard, Canadian Forestry Corps, under the British Expeditionary Force, served in France summer to fall, 1918, fighting in the Second Battle of the Somme.
Katherine folded Leslie's uniform. She took a long breath. She ran her hand across the material. What this wool had seen. What these badges had witnessed. The wool felt coarse to her hand. Perhaps someday their memory just might mean something to someone. Leslie had survived the battles, true, but not the war. She saw it in his eyes. That unacknowledged burden. That unshakable specter. But he was alive. For this she thanked God in her daily prayers. Katherine tucked the uniform into the bottom of the trunk. With all the love a mother could muster, she closed the lid. That's one, she murmured.
White Jack Pritchard
The youngest of four brothers, Jack Pritchard almost escaped the Great War, but his enlistment in August, 1918, might have saved his life. Jack joined the British Service avoiding his participation with American Forces. In that year, England and the United States reached an agreement forcing all non-enlisted Englishmen between 18 and 44 into Black Jack Pershing's Army. Not one to follow any colors, Jack chose the Union Jack. The outcome from his last months in the war are unknown. Sometimes, surviving letters tell us more from absence than words. No black edged envelopes were nestled in these piles. Jack was spared from forever riding with the four horsemen along the Eastern Front.
Machined brass matchbox cover. Vive la France.
Katherine lay the Union Jack across the bed, then folded in into a small bundle. The word British on the edge seemed funny to her. Who needed to be told? Certainly not the mothers of these boys. Better in her hands than draped over a coffin. His Master's Voice. She tucked the Union Jack alongside the Forestry Uniform. Two, she sighed.
Engraved L. Pritchard, 2499186, Somme, 1918. Reverse match case.
Smokeless Bill
William Pritchard reached the United States, far removed from the European war. Little is known about him, except he was employed by I.E. duPont de Nemours & Company of Wilmington, Delaware. Ironically, du Pont built their wealth on gunpowder and was one of the leading makers of the smokeless variety. When the Great War began, soldiers filled the fields in bright red uniforms, a legacy from the days of smoke-filled battle landscapes, where one needed to know who was standing beside him. Friend or foe. Without smoke, most of these early combatants were slaughtered in the thousands by the wrath of machine gun fire. Lessons learned, lessons lost.
Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War 1914-19, General Series. Volume I. August 1914 - September 1915, by Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid,
published by J. O. Patenaude, I.S.O., Ottawa,
1938
Katherine sat on the bed, her head reeling. All the years devoted to her childrens' rearing, and, in one wrong turn, one unlucky step, one errant bullet...she cried. The uselessness of life filled her soul. The youngest. The best. The future. Generations time and time again sacrificed to war. Where was the logic? Would this Sisyphean cycle ever end? Or was this God's penance for being human? A riddle without solution. A prayer without an answer. The War to End All Wars. Nothing more than a myth. Within a generation, this plague would return, she felt it. Her sorrow touched depths she never knew. Three, was all she uttered.
Achilles Heel
Soldiers' Civil Re-Establishment
Ottawa, Ontario
July 20, 1922
Dear Sir,
Your letter of July 9, 1922 has been received, and I have again looked up the record of your case since you have been in the United States.
I am somewhat disappointed that you have felt that you should continue to report for treatment...it cannot be considered that you now have any disability resulting from Service.
I presume that you are with your family, and it is probably best for you to remain with them, doing, however, any work that you may be able to get, carry on at some sort of employment
Yours very truly,
XXXX, M.D.
Rupert Clifford Pritchard. His letters pepper the trunk with his traumatic condition. Helplessly caught in the web of post-war treatment, of which there was little, Rupert floundered, supported by his father, mother, and especially his siblings. Letters attest to their bond devotion, many signed with multiple X's. A family's love is only as tight as the parent's knot. Just as the world was ill-prepared for a war fought with industrial might against horses and men, the aftermath of health care was quickly overwhelmed. There were simply no answers for a war the magnitude of the Great War. It is felt through the anguish in a father's words, the quiet tears in a mother's hands. Both victims, trapped by forces beyond reason, reach out to their son over and over, but the damage was done. His wartime letters, sometimes written in his hand, others in the hand of Red Cross volunteers, show a young boy, devoted to family and country. In the end the former trumped the latter, as it always will.
Multiple fund raisers on the homefront supported the war effort and kept the populace focused.
Unspoken Truth
How do you find your way home when you lose your compass? Katherine held these letters and read them over and over. The wear on the paper tells the story in ways words never can. Without her daughters around her, she could never have faced each day. Waiting for news. A letter. A photograph. A return. Doris, Enid, and Gitchie devoted their lives to raising funds for the troops. A reflex action. A way to express their love. Something to cling to. How they prayed for their brothers. How they all feared that unexpected telegram. That list of names in the window. These letters were the last to go into the trunk. Katherine sat there, clasping them. Time passed, measured by hands on a dial, sunlight in the sky. What good was it? Time changed nothing. It never returned the dead, ignored the living. It never apologized. All it did was gray your hair, line your face, and remind you of life's losses.
August, 1918 English letter to Leslie Pritchard.
Words of humor and encouragement in a too long war.
Charlie Chaplin, by this time, was an international star.
She stared at the full trunk before her. If she could, she would climb in herself. But life goes on, it must. She owed it to her family. She placed the letters among the mementos in the till, among the victory parade flags, the buttons, photographs, postcards, even a brass match case engraved Somme, 1918. Memories, though bitter, were memories just the same. For another day, another generation. Perhaps someday someone would rediscover her journey, would grasp the futility in war, could stop this needless sacrifice. This was the truth, forever inches before man's face. Katherine closed the lid, secured the latches, and slipped the hasp into the lock. She leaned over and kissed the trunk. At the bottom of the staircase, she hesitated, looked up once more, then switching off the light, closed the door forever.
Saturday we reopen this door, a reverent and humbling act.