Wren reveals colonel's love letters

A SENIOR Wren was yesterday accused of breaking up families and continuing relationships with up to six men, as she kept an affair alive with her former boss.

Lieutenant Commander Karen Pearce wrote "intimate letters" to married men during her three-year affair with the high-ranking Army officer, his court martial was told.

But Lt-Cdr Pearce denied having any affairs, except for a brief fling with a fellow naval officer in Malta, before her relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Keith Pople ended in 1996.

Yesterday, on the second day of his court martial, Lt-Cdr Pearce, 34, read out love letters and poems said to have been sent to her by Lt-Col Pople.

The letters told of Lt-Col Pople's passion for his former junior, in a key Ministry of Defence team, and how he planned to leave his wife for her. Other letters sent to friends of the Wren charted the increasing bitterness after their break-up. One described her as "so lovely but almost the most duplicitous person I have ever known".

Lt-Col Pople, 42, sat with his head in his hands as the intimate contents of the letters were read to the hearing at Aldershot, Hampshire. His wife, Brenda, sat next to an Army chaplain a few yards from her husband.

Lt-Col Pople denies two charges of scandalous conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. If found guilty he faces dismissal from the Army after a distinguished 20-year career.

Standing in the witness box, the uniformed Wren was questioned yesterday afternoon by Ryddion Willis, counsel for the defence, about her relationships with married men.

Lt-Cdr Pearce admitted that her relationship with a married Royal Marine major had prompted gossip in the wardroom of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, on which she served in 1995.

As she started her sexual relationship with Lt-Col Pople the court martial heard that she also befriended Lt-Col Tim Moore, an American assistant air attache. She admitted going to dinner and nightclubs with him and that he had stayed the night at her home.

But Lt-Cdr Pearce, of Nyewood, West Sussex, said: "I was 100 per cent loyal to him [Lt-Col Pople] right up to February, 1996. My relationship with Colonel Moore was and is purely platonic."

She said that she also met a married Royal Marine major in 1992 and later served with him on HMS Illustrious at the height of her affair with Lt- Col Pople.

Miss Willis said: "Why were you forming such a close relationship with another married man at that time?"

Lt-Cdr Pearce replied: "We were good friends, it's no more than that." And she denied wanting a sexual relationship with him.

Miss Willis said that one reason why the couple split, in June 1996, was because Lt-Col Pople discovered a drawer full of letters from other men underneath her bed. Miss Willis asked if at any time she had mentioned the correspondence with "five or six close male friends" to Lt-Col Pople.

When the couple split, Miss Willis said Lt-Col Pople told Lt-Cdr Pearce that "he had left his wife, he had left his family for you and he was disappointed that you had received this other correspondence".

But Lt-Cdr Pearce said he had broken off their affair because he claimed he could never make her happy. She said she had never told him about the letters as they were only from friends.

The hearing continues.