letter to sweetheart

[fuggy]

how moving was that? how proud the girlfriend and parents of this young man must be. his love for helen o'pray, his feelings for her. you have to read this letter to fully appriciate something that i wish i was capable of expressing.

[IggyB]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml =/news/2006/09/23/nirq23.xml

[wonder years]

yes i was very moved when i read it and i thought it will make her feel so loved by him but then at the same time it will make the reality of whats has happed hit harder knowing the great love she as lost, but better to know this so that it will be a comfort to her, hope i make sense

[jenstar]

Is that it? Not really worth releasing to the world's press, was it?

[wonder years]

he was a very brave lad who was doing is duty in a very dangrous enviroment that cost him his life, and he knew the dangers, and by doing what he did experssing his feelings in case the worst happened which did, i think it was told because it was such a touching story.

[IAmTheMovie]

The full letter is posted here --> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5373142.stm

[juddlinski]

Very touching, if only we could read in Arabic, we'd hear about the 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed to date.

[morbidstorm]

To Juddlinski - Lee Thornton chose a career in the armed forces, HE did not make the decision that this country should go to war. You should not take away from him his final respects from people.

I am from Blackpool, and know Lee's family. No one has the right to be so rude about someone who has paid their life to serve their country.

And Jenstar - would you be saying that if it was a letter from someone YOU'D lost in these circumstances?

You should both be ashamed.

[jenstar]

Well, I wouldn't be releasing private, personal letters to the newspapers in the first place.

[wendilla]

Jenstar I think you are a very uncaring and rude person you obviously dont know what it is like to lose a loved one and these men are doing a duty he felt he had to express his feelings and it helps his fiance to know that we are with her in her time of sorrow.To backfire on a topic like this is disgusting.Have some heart to what are troops are doing out there.A spell in the forces might do you some good and no need to fire back on this answer as i wont argue with you.

[maxximus]

yes all very touching, it's a shame that all those palestinian,iraqi and afghani lads didn't get their letters posted in the paper also.

[Kim A]

The letter was private and shouldn't have been released to the press under any circumstances. Whilst I sympathise with the girl, what possible use can it be to let a personal outpouring be published?. It demeans and reduces her boyfriend's heartfelt and private thoughts to nothing more than sickly sentiment. I'm sure that when he wrote it, he intended it for her eyes only, and I think it really bad form to put it on general release. Show it to your mum, or your sister, by all means, but not to the rest of the world. When my friend's husband was dying, he wrote her a letter in a similar vein, telling her how much he loved her, then he hid the letter amongst his personal papers for her to find after he died. She treasures this letter,and speaks of it often. We all (her best friends) know she has the letter and sleeps with it under her pillow every night, but she has never, in seven years, given any of us even the mereest hint of what the letter contains, and we have never been so crass as to ask her. How much more expressive of love than airing one's private correspondence in public.

[shammydodger]

It reminded me of this

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/sullivan_ballou .asp

Sent by a Union soldier to his wife on the eve of Bull Run, the first battle of the US Civil War. The more we change...

[fuggy]

j

juddlinski.

do you refer to the 100,000 before or after saddam

[fuggy]

maxximus.

dont some of these palestinian, iraqi and afgana lads (whats with the lads bit? bit familiar? you must be expecting the 5am knock) get t.v time vie al jezera?

[China Doll]

The letter is very touching.

Reporting on the sad death of Lee Thornton is a newsworthy item, (as is the deaths of Iraqi civilians) but I do think that the letter should have remained private.

That said, this is a personal opinion and perhaps the family and girlfriend of Lee Thornton thought that releasing the letter would serve the purpose of highlighting the individual tragedies that are occuring on a daily basis in Iraq so maybe none of us are best placed to comment.

Surfice to say, the death of a man (or woman) fighting in this war who had their whole life to live should always touch our hearts and remind us of the fragility of human life.

[bendigedig]

the letter is about love, not war - how good love can be, regardless of who they are and how he died. thats how i read the article anyway

[maxximus]

not sure http://www.iraqbodycount.org/webcounters.php i'm catching your drift fuggy, cheers eh!

[anotheoldgit]

Wow I have just read the letter, and it moved me to tears, I went through WW2 and many lost their lives, and similar letters were written, but those chaps were fighting for this country and their loved ones. But this poor lad gave his young life in a war that we should not be fighting.

But after having read some of the posts on this subject, I feel disgusted that there are such people as the ones I have addressed still living safely in this country.

Juddlinski :- Who are the main killers out in iraq, the iraqis themselves.

maxximus:- Why don't you go out there and join the rest of the terrorists, you may then have a chance to write your own letter.

Jenstar & Kim A Can't you try to lose your obvious frosty characters for a moment and try to warm to this poor girl? perhaps this is her way to try and deal with her obvious grief at this time.

[maxximus]

please define terrorist, this overstated and much abused term.

[Kim A]

I don't consider that keeping certain things private between two people makes me frosty. I just couldn't see the point of broadcasting the letter - I think, as I said, that it demeans the sentiments expressed by the writer, which were only intended for his girlfriend to see. If he had written 'Oh, and by the way, see that the papers publish this after I'm gone', then maybe I'd feel differently, but he didn't. He wrote privately to his girlfriend, a letter to be opened in the event of his death, expressing his deepest, personal feelings towards her. I think it a bit tasteless and crass of the newspapers to even consider the letter for publication, given the circumstances. I hope that the recipient of the letter doesn't later regret her decision to allow publication, a decision obviously made in the depths of grief, when she probably wasn't thinking straight.