SHEPPARTON’S Noel Dumesny had quite a find when cleaning out his mother’s home after her death in 1966.
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Mr Dumesny, originally of Horsham, found letters from the First World War with correspondence between his mother Isabelle Dumesny, nee Sladier, and diggers from the Vectis area.
‘‘When my mum died I found them in an old box,’’ he said.
Mr Dumesny said his mother, who was also from Vectis, wrote to her friends who had gone off to war when she was 16 years old.
The messages are brief and include either general chit-chat or nothing but a name.
A man referred to only as Bert wrote about his distaste for his official Army photograph.
‘‘They came out awful as usual,’’ he wrote.
‘‘You’d think I was looking for a fight.’’
A date on one of the cards shows the correspondence was from 1914.
Mr Dumesny hopes to donate the letters and photographs to a war museum.