FOREWORD
The treasure trove of Captain Edward George Cooper’s World War I letters passed down through his family to his great niece, who during the covid lock-down period in England 2020-21, used the time to good purpose to complete a long outstanding task of transcribing George’s (he was known to his family as George rather than Edward) wartime letters from the field. This was no easy task, as his letters were written on field notebook paper, in pencil, which had become faded and very fragile over time, made even more difficult with the foreign place names, both in France and German East Africa.
It was a painstaking task, necessitating the use of a magnifying glass and deep research into military history and place names to ensure the correct transcription of the letter collection into a readable format.
For this reason there are a number of places where some words and phrases could not be deciphered, indicated by “……..,” But these are few and far between! Scanned samples of an original letter can be seen on pages 4 and 5 following.