Letters from Frank Sharp

On Active Service – Egypt & France 1915 – 1919

By Michael Peter Nunan and Frank Nunan

Private Frank Sharp 1036 served in the 4th South African Infantry (Scottish) Regiment for three years and 209 days, surviving some of the most intense and ferocious fighting in World War 1. When he was discharged in April 1919, he was barely 22 years old. However, his letters to his family back home in Mafeking were invariably light-hearted and positive. It is only in his story of the battle near Cambrai in March 1918 that we get an inkling of what he went through. Based on his Cambrai story, we believe he was mustered as a sniper, not an occupation known for its long life expectancy. Although wounded and captured near the end of the war, he survived to marry our grandmother and take responsibility for her three children. He is remembered as a big, gruff, but extremely generous man, with a prankish sense of humour and a heart of gold. As his grandsons, we are delighted to be able to preserve some of his remaining letters from the front, and to try to put them into context.