Winter 2017
TBPL Newsletter

“Just a few lines to let you know that all is well with me. Lately I have been moving all up and down the country. We are attached to the French army and when they want anything battered down we do it for them. Two days ago we blew up some steel works at Habbiagen, north of Metz. It was very clear and we could see the effect of our bombs. I was the leader and my first bomb landed square on a factory about 400 feet long by 200 feet wide.” This excerpt is from a letter written home and published in the Port Arthur News Chronicle on November 21 1916. The letter’s author was Flight Sub-Lieutenant Ernest Potter, son of Mr and Mrs W. H. Potter of Port Arthur. The story of Ernest’s war experience is detailed through multiple newspaper articles in November 1916. Both the Port Arthur News Chronicle and the Fort William Daily Times carried the story and Ernest has been the focus of multiple Looking Back articles as published in the Chronicle Journal in 2005 and 2011. To read the full text of this letter and many more letters that were received from the front lines during the First World War, check out the Soldiers’ Letters section of the World War One Thunder Bay Centennial Project. New information is updated monthly and you may just find a story with an unexpected connection.