In April 1917 Matron Samson sat in her small makeshift office in the isolation hospital at Le Ville. The shift was just changing, a long day of tending the sick and the dying drawing to a close. Matron Samson would write one more letter that evening and, as always, she would choose her words carefully. Anxious families would scrutinise every sentence, squeezing the most from each tiny solace, or grieving for a lifetime over some unintended meaning. But this last letter was easier than most. Matron Samson had written before to Vera Deakin; the crisp, typed instructions of Red Cross correspondence suggested calm and order – quite unlike the desperation of dying men and the broken hearts they'd leave behind them. And Private Overson's death was better than many. ‘Young and delicate looking’, he wasn't the sort to linger. Meningitis could carry him them off quite quickly – a mercy really. But, of course, she couldn't say that. What other consolation could she offer them? Matron Samson dipped pen into ink and wrote large and deliberately: