A nice heartwarming story for a change. "For soldiers serving at the front in World War One, letters and parcels from home provided a welcome respite from the ever-present dangers in the trenches. One message from a six-year-old girl, written on a box of chocolates, led to an enduring relationship between a family in Cornwall and a soldier at the front. The long relationship between Bombardier Edwin Hassall and the Burbidge family began completely by chance when he picked up the wrapper from a box of chocolates that was lying in a front-line trench. On it was the name and address of six-year-old Joan Burbidge, which she had insisted her father add to the parcel he was sending to the front. "I think I can remember running back and saying to my father that the soldier won't know who sent him the chocolate, and daddy standing up in the room and taking down the flaps of the chocolate packet and writing this message from 'little Joan'," she remembered in a BBC documentary made 60 years after the end of the war. "I then went off to Sunday school and I'm quite sure none of us thought any more about it, I'm sure my father didn't. "[He] just did it to amuse the child and that was the end of that." But her father was wrong and six weeks later a reply came from Bombardier Hassall, who explained he had come across her message quite by chance. "I was taking cover in the trenches recently occupied by the enemy when I idly picked up the enclosed chocolate packet," he wrote. "I have carried the packet with me, off duty and on for probably a fortnight and have at last found time to send it to you. It must go on and on until we stagger exhausted into the arms of victory - when that will be God only knows Bombardier Edwin Hassall "Please forgive me for writing - I thought that you would be interested to know that your name had reached the German line in the hottest contended battle of the war." Much of the letter's contents would have been lost on a six-year-old, but he was shrewd enough to thank little Joan for "a message from the children of England in who's defence we are fighting" and say how it had "cheered" him. Joan told her father she wanted him to send a message back to her "chocolate soldier". "I think there had been a wedding in the family recently - and I said [to] send him my love and tell him I'll marry him when I grow up. "That evidently amused him very much [as] back came the engagement ring and photograph." 'Limit of human endurance' So began a correspondence with Joan's father that lasted through the war and beyond - though only the letters from Mr Hassall have survived." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25590102
