A folder of First World War letters, Royal Naval Division, Drake Battalion and Royal Naval Air Service interest, May 1917 to November 1918. Seventeen letters were sent to his aunt in Birmingham by A.S. George Brierley, R.N.D. (service number R/1108) while training at Blandford Naval Camp, from the Western Front (recording enemy shelling), and from three hospitals in England. Some letters have the decorative letterheads of the Y.M.C.A., the 'Church Army Recreation Hut or Tent' on the Western Front, and the Soldiers' Christian Association. Two of A.S. Brierley's letters are from a hospital in France, with a further eleven from hospitals in England where he was recovering from various injuries in the trenches to his foot, leg and eye. The hospitals are 2nd Southern General Hospital, Southmeads, Bristol ('I suppose I shall be getting up one of these days. I have been in bed five weeks'); the Red Cross Hospital at Tewkesbury (a page is missing from one letter); and the Red Cross Hospital at Portishead, Somerset. On 23 October 1918 George describes 'a very bad attack of flu' during a second spell at the Bristol hospital; he survived the devastating Spanish Flu, as by 14 November, three days after the end of the war, he records a further transfer to the Portishead hospital ('I suppose you went balmy [sic] at Brum when the news came through about peace ... we are having a procession tonight and whist drives and concerts ... and we are all going to a free show at Bristol this afternoon'). There is also a Field Service postcard sent from France by George Brierley.

Another letter is from George's brother or cousin, Francis Horace Brierley (service number F41364), also sent to their aunt, from the Royal Naval Air Service training camp at Withnoe, Plymouth. He writes that this was his third RNAS training camp since Crystal Palace and Fort Tregantle: 'Our camp is right on the sea front at the top of the cliffs. It's three hundred feet high and we have to go down every day to drill on the sands'.