The attached letter was written in northern Germany, where my father-in-law Jim Taylor was serving with the 44th Royal Tank Regiment. It is one of more than 200 letters, telegrams and air letters he sent to his wife Pip in Liverpool between training in 1941 and demobilisation in 1945. The letters include Jim’s time in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and post D-Day in Europe. Jim wrote about his everyday life, his surroundings, the funny side of life and the near misses, once they were sufficiently in the past to survive the censor. He occasionally included photographs with the letters and annotated them after the war with locations and circumstances.
Jim noted the date of each letter he received from Pip but couldn’t keep them all. However, we can sometimes guess the contents from his responses, for example when he learnt he was a father whilst standing in the Western Desert in 1941.
This letter dated 7 May 1945 describes his feelings as he realises it is all over at last.
I have been adding extracts from Jim’s letters to my family history website along with the photographs. An Index for these may be seen at https://burgesses.info/taylor/james_taylor_letters_index.html
