SIR - I found John Curtis' poem Young Pretender, which you published recently, both interesting and moving. Interesting because as a student of the First World War and its poetry I have never seen a poem on this particular subject before. Moving because it echoes the treatment meted out to my uncle in 1914.

Aged 15 he was walking the promenade in his hometown when he was accosted by a number of young ladies, no doubt members of the Order of the White Feather, and presented with the offending items. What they didn't know, and did not bother to find out, was that he was dying of tuberculosis and therefore exempt from military service. My mother would recount him coming home broken hearted and in tears. He was to die shortly after.

Later in 1914 the government issued On War Service Badges to workers engaged in essential war work in order to protect such workers from the attentions of the Order. I believe my uncle had been serving an apprenticeship as a shipwright and, ironically, would have been exempt on these grounds.

He did not die on the battlefield, like so many of his contemporaries, but his untimely death was made all the more painful, and possible hastened, by the actions of some thoughtless young women and their white feathers. They do indeed bear a great responsibility.

NORMAN DAY Droitwich