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Albert Latham Postcards sent to May Edgington, 1915-1917, in the Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection, Accession #10875-w, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
This collection of postcards was given to the University of Virginia Library by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Columbia, South Carolina, on January 13, 1994.
Albert Latham was on active service at Marlborough, England, on February 4, 1915, with the No. 6 Ambulance Convoy, M.A.C., "C" section, 2nd Army, British Expeditionary Force, prior to embarkation for the front. By May 13, 1915, Latham was with the 1st Army and attached to a hospital.
This addition to the Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection consists of ca. 300 postcards, ca. 1915-1917, black-and-white and color, of scenes of Europe and World War I, collected by Albert Latham while on active service in France and sent to Miss May Edgington, Upper House Farm, Shamley Green, Guilford, England, who arranged them in a postcard album. The cards have been removed from the album, kept in their original order, and placed in groups of twenty-five in photographic envelopes.
Albert Latham wrote letters as well as postcards to May Edgington. The postcards were sent mainly to let her know he was alive and well and to add to her collection and do not contain a great deal of information about the war. Many of the cards lack identifying inscriptions because they have been censored. The postcards are almost exclusively of cities, cathedrals, chateaus, street scenes, ruins, battles scenes, and monuments in France. There are also two series of cards in color featuring the soldiers of different nations and women dressed in native attire.