Letters from Pompeii

Year 5 and 6 students recently completed a unit learning about the devastation of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, Italy on the 24th August, 79 AD. Children read the letters of an eye witness account from Pliny the Younger to his historian friend, Tacitus. As part of their assessment for the unit, children were to write a letter to a loved one as if they lived through the devastation of that tragic 24 hours in history. I was extremely impressed by the commitment many of our students made to writing a creative and emotive letter. The following is a beautifully recorded letter depicting the essence of the era, written by Catherine from Room 28. 

My Dear Antonio,

What I have to tell you is one thing history will never forget.

I was doing what I was usually doing, practicing what Mother and Father say I am great at, drawing. I was reclining on the luscious sofa drawing my beautiful view of Herculaneum, one of my neighboring cities. All of a sudden, the ground shook a little and my mother felt as if something was terribly wrong. "Darling, tell Astios to send a message to your father saying: come home quick!" The ground is only shaking but I feel as if something is terribly wrong! And Darling, stay with me". I laughed a little at mother's embarrassing short poem but it's obvious that they were made for each other.

So, my father desperately came home. It's now 2:00pm and I'm very worried because I see very dark and toxic looking smoke racing up the gigantic mouth of Mt. Vesuvius. I didn't want to tell my parents because they already had a lot to handle with my father's business. But my younger sister, Adriana told my parents and they ordered us to start packing. No sooner had those words left their mouth, a loud BOOM met our ear drums [followed by] a shower of ash and rocks.  We were frightened by the awful sight as our joyful and heart-warming city had been nearly half buried under dark ash and rocks. My eyes started watering but a good thing was I couldn't see the dreadful sight.  Mother and Father decided to leave Pompeii once and for all and didn't hesitate to put their plan into action.

But I didn't want to leave. I had my friends and family here. And our house and belongings. Besides, this is our hometown! But my bratty sister thought this was a joke. "Yay! We're moving to a different land! Where the birds are chirping, blues skies like blankets, per....." Adriana was dreaming "Adriana?! Can't you see we are about to get killed along with an entire city! Who knows if South Italy might get wiped out with us?!", I screamed. "Catherina, don't talk to sister like that Darling. Adriana, your sister has a point, this is very serious. From now on, she is in charge of you. Listen to her, okay Dear", my mother said, very subtlety. Meanwhile, my father had nearly finished packing. But just as we were about to leave, CRASH! Something fell down but we saw nothing except the things from the shake. Then another CRASH! We looked down from our balcony, and we saw tiles. Tiles were falling off our roof!

So, we ran south as far away as we could from Mt. Vesuvius. The ground started shaking and the volcano started making angry sounds! Everything was getting destroyed! Suddenly, when we were at least 3 cities away from Pompeii a black smoke started coming out Vesuvius and everything in its way started getting destroyed! It was the pyroclastic flow! We hid as it made its way towards us but it stopped in front of a huge building..

After a week, we returned back to Pompeii but EVERYTHING was destroyed so we decided to live in another city for 2 years while father and mother people started rebuilding. Life was very different because it was so plain but it's better to live poorly than to have no life, right? We lived in a plain apartment with plain food and clothes. We could only wear our dresses on special occasions so this is life, right? But I'm grateful for it.

Yours sincerely,

Catherina (Catherine).