The First World War had a significant impact on the English landscape. Troops were garrisoned across the countryside, with many camps sited in Salisbury Plain and its surrounding areas. 15 different camps were created in and around the Wiltshire village of Codford St Mary and were used as a base for both military training, convalescence and to accommodate British troops before their deployment to France.
Neither George nor his brother Albert thought much of their time in Codford St Mary. George's first impression, 'It's all huts and hills and we are not allowed out to the town. There is about two women and we are like sheep in a fold'. In June he wrote, 'I expect if I dont go soon I shall worried to the grave in this hole there are no houses for two miles at least and all hills and huts'.
His brother Albert in a letter to his mother in April 1916 wrote, 'I shant be sorry in one way to leave Colchester as I am getting fed up with it.' A month later he wrote to his sister Ethel from Codford, 'I wish I was in Colchester as this is such a lonely place there is nowhere to go to pass the time a way so it seems miserable'. He ends the same letter, 'I didn't think there would be a place in England like this I though Sweffling was a lively place but this top the lot.'
In August 1916 George wrote to his sister Ethel, 'We are both quite well and happy. I have just come out of the trenches. We have had three days there I have not got much for you this time only we both like being out here better than Codford St Mary'.
George and Albert Stopher died within a few weeks of one another in the spring of 1917. A collection of over two hundred letters chart their experiences as they describe what the war meant to them. These letters along with photographs and other items, held at the Suffolk Records Office allow us to hear the voices of these two young men, to remind us of the suffering and sacrifice of just one Suffolk family.
