In Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 1, episode 2, we catch up with Julia and Henry in their own time period. It’s a chance to see how they met, and it turns out it was through letters thanks to Julia’s important War Time job.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Blood of My Blood season 1, episode 2.
The second episode took us to 1917, which was toward the end of World War I. As Henry Beauchamp fought on the frontlines, Julia Moriston worked in the mail room. However, as we saw in the episode, she didn’t just make sure letters went to the right place. Her job was far more important.
Julia was redacting sensitive information in Blood of My Blood
Julia’s job was to read all of the letters sent back and forth between soldiers and their families. Each section of the mailroom would take on a different platoon, helping to handle the workload, and then they would use black ink to redact any sensitive information.
We saw this happen with soldier writing to their families, so it would make sense to think that Julia’s job was to prevent the truth getting to the families. However, the information as also redacted the other way, and that wasn’t to protect the soldiers at all.
Instead, this was to protect Britain. Should some information be in those letters that would get to the enemy, it could have been disastrous. Nobody could allow that, so the women had to get to work back home to handle it all. It was easier than telling all soldiers that they couldn’t say certain things.
That meant Julia knew what the soldiers were going through
We see in Blood of My Blood season 1, episode 2 that Henry suffers from PTSD. Julia doesn’t look down on him for this, and instead, holds him to get him through his nightmares. After all, she knows exactly what this man and so many others have been through.
She read those letters, and she would have read Henry’s letters without the censorship in a lot of cases. She knew the horrors that they faced, and while she wasn’t there in trench warfare, she would have had enough of an imagination to see Henry’s pictures brought to life. She is an artist, after all.
It adds a layer to Julia, especially since we know she has a brilliant memory. While many other families were left unsure of some of the messages they were being sent from their soldiers at war, Julia took in it all and had to deal with the worry and stress.
Blood of My Blood airs on Fridays on STARZ.
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