Betty Reisner with the letters at her home in Holloway

A WOMAN who found a series of heartbreaking letters from a soldier killed in the First World War to his sweetheart is appealing to the public to help her return them to his family.

Betty Reisner, now 85, was handed the letters written by Carl Dudley to his wartime lover Elsie Griffiths by her neighbour as he cleared out the attic of a house in Freegrove Road, Holloway.

“He lit a fire in the back and he came out with this bundle of stuff,” Ms Reisner said.

“I said ‘What you doing Pete?’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m burning all the rubbish I’m finding in the attic’. I said ‘Can I have a look at it please?’ So he handed a bundle over to me.”

What she found inside was priceless.

Hidden in a garish box of Christmas cards was a cache of letters from Carl, a soldier from Stourbridge, to Elsie, a young lady who had once lived in Mrs Reisner’s house with her parents and two older sisters.

The letters tell a heart­breaking story.

Mrs Reisner, who volunteered at the Whittington Hospital for 15 years, said she was haunted by the story of a love lost just weeks before the end of the First World War, when Carl was killed in action on the front line in France when he was aged just 24.

The couple met when they were both 21, the letters reveal. While it is not clear from the messages how they met, he was studying at the Chartered Surveyors Institute and may have rented a room in her family home.

By 1916 they were writing regularly to each other as he was conscripted into the army.

Initially addressing her as “Dear Miss Griffiths,” their romance bloomed fairly swiftly and before long he was calling her “my own darling Elsie” and signing off “your boy” and “your loving Carl”.

In one letter, dated from 1918, he fantasises about them being together as he writes from the front line with no blankets or pillows at night and just one rain sheet between him and the cold ground.

He writes: “I just want to have a little chat with you, even if you are not here by my side. So we’ll just pretend you’ve drawn up your chair to mine – no, we’ll economise and both sit on the armchair! Eh?

“And then I can ‘sneak’ my arm around you and kiss you just to my heart’s content. Elsie! Darling! Sweetheart!”

His letters mostly came in Active Service envelopes, which he has signed to “certify on my honour that the contents refer to nothing but private and family matters,” and he never gives away any details of their location or activities.

The final letter Elsie received, on July 26 1918, is a seven-page affair, breathless with excitement after receiving a glut of letters from her due to a postal delay.

He writes: “First of all lassie, we will just caress and kiss for a few seconds – so come cuddle closer sweetheart and for the time we’ll forget the war.”

But it was not to be. Carl promised to “write again shortly,” but was killed on September 29.

Elsie stayed in touch with Carl’s sister Minnie and met her at Euston in December of that year.

Carl’s mother also wrote to her, describing how at one point she thought she had seen her dead son on a tram and ran to the doors only to be greeted by strangers.

His parents placed a memorial notice in the local paper every year on the anniversary of his death, while his brother William Ewart Dudley named his second son Carl in honour of his uncle who died fighting for peace.

Elsie remained unmarried until her death, instead living at the family home to look after her parents while her sisters both went on to marry their soldier boyfriends.

After her parents died, she continued to rent rooms there, until her own passing in 1947.

Extra details may help somebody track down the people who should have the letters.

Minnie went on to have a son, possibly called Jack, but died in her early 40s.

Their brother Ewart emigrated to the United States and it is likely there are still family members there.

Elsie’s sisters, Amy Case and Lily Bass, both married in north London and each had two children.

The family history was researched by Annette Witheridge, a neighbour.

For Mrs Reisner, who has lived in Elsie’s old home for 50 years, there was another strange echo.
“Her name was EM Griffiths. Well I was born ME Griffiths,” she said, before going on to describe the tragedy that had befallen her own life.

Her mother died giving birth to her, and she was cared for by an aunt who she believed was her mother until the age of 11 when she was taken to the gravestone and given an explanation.

Despite having six siblings, and a cousin she thought of as a brother, they are all dead now, along with her beloved artist husband Sandor Reisner, who died three years ago after 50 years of marriage.

Does she feel any connection to Elsie?

“No, because I’ve had my life with [my husband] and she hadn’t had her life with Carl,” she said, but said she nonetheless felt compelled to share their story. It’s just something in me when I read them, it caught my heart,” she said.

“The fact that there are these letters is proof that these things happened during wars. Looking at some of these letters, they’re heartbreaking.”

Ms Reisner said: “And after he’d gone, she didn’t leave the place. She didn’t marry. Her parents had been letting rooms for businessmen. And once they died she carried on doing it. The dreams had gone.”

If you could help find the family, email charlotte@islingtontribune.com