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WORLD WAR I 'Letters from Eric Travis Townsend, Captain 1/5th Highland Light Infantry. Gallipoli, Egypt & Palestine. 1915-16-17', [1921] (3) image 1
WORLD WAR I 'Letters from Eric Travis Townsend, Captain 1/5th Highland Light Infantry. Gallipoli, Egypt & Palestine. 1915-16-17', [1921] (3) image 2
WORLD WAR I 'Letters from Eric Travis Townsend, Captain 1/5th Highland Light Infantry. Gallipoli, Egypt & Palestine. 1915-16-17', [1921] (3) image 3
Lot 117

WORLD WAR I
'Letters from Eric Travis Townsend, Captain 1/5th Highland Light Infantry. Gallipoli, Egypt & Palestine', manuscript, c.1918; and 2 others

15 September 2021, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £2,805 inc. premium

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WORLD WAR I

'Letters from Eric Travis Townsend, Captain 1/5th Highland Light Infantry. Gallipoli, Egypt & Palestine. 1915-16-17', manuscript, 354 pages, ink on lined paper, approximately 110 photographs (2 portraits of Townsend in military uniform, one loose; others from a private camera of camp life, etc., mostly 50 x 70mm.), early green morocco gilt by Riviere & Son, t.e.g., spine faded, 4to (288 x 225mm.), [c.1918]; Idem, another manuscript copy, 340 pages, 2 portrait photographs, contemporary red morocco, t.e.g., extremities rubbed, 4to (288 x 225mm.), [c.1918]--"Reminiscences of Ronald Travis Townsend... Died 30th November 1917. Aged 28". By his Mother", manuscript, c.130 pages, ink on lined paper, 20 photographs of Townsend (one loose) and several newspaper cuttings pasted in, contemporary half morocco gilt, by Maclehose of Glasgow, t.e.g., slightly rubbed, 4to (285 x 220mm.), [1921] (3)

Footnotes

Finely presented memorials, written up by their mother, to two Scottish brothers who died within three weeks of each other fighting on different fronts during the First World War. Both were born in Scotland and educated at Rugby School (where they served in the cadets). The youngest, Eric, (born 1894), joined the 5th Highland Light Infantry on leaving school and was mobilized for action on 5 August 1914, the day after war was declared. His letters home, at times sent almost daily, provide a vivid account of his war from departure at Devonport Docks aboard the Transylvania (2 June 1915), to Malta, action in Gallipoli, transfer to Egypt (action and hospitalisation), to Palestine where - a few weeks after jokingly asking his mother "Is Haggis postable?" for Christmas - he noted in his last letter on 4 November 1917 "Dear Mother... The war has started again here, but we are entirely out of it... in fact enjoying bathes in the sea!" Just four days later he died in combat, battling with the Highlanders for a Ridge, "taken and re-taken four times, and it was in one of these advances that Eric was killed, I think by a machine gun" according to a note from a Captain of his company. He was first buried at the village of Deir Sineid, prior to removal to the Military Cemetery at Gaza. Handsomely presented in a Riviere binding, the album includes upwards of 100 photographs, some depicting Townsend, the Highlanders, street scenes and antiquities.

Eric's elder brother Ronald (born 1889) had emigrated to Canada in 1913, but at the outbreak of war jointed the 50th Gordon Highlanders. Due to his training in accountancy he was assigned to a desk-bound position at the Pay Office to the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Desperate to take a more active role in the war (he pictured a situation that when asked by his children what he had done in the war his reply would be "Signed Cheques!"), he resigned in April 1917, gained his "Wings" with the Royal Air Force by mid-June, and was sent in mid-October to France. Here, just 22 days after the death of his brother Eric in Palestine, his aeroplane was hit "when leading a flight over the enemy's line at Lesdain, near Cambrai... and he made the supreme sacrifice". A memorial plaque to the brothers is to be found at St. Ninian's Church, Troon, Argyll.

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