Dad enlisted as a regular with the South Wales Borderers 3 years before WWII began and trained as a signaller. Why he chose the SWB I don’t know, he was an East End Londoner with no connections to Wales.
During the war he was with the Eighth Army in Africa and later letters state that he was with the Wiltshire Regiment. 1944 they landed in Sicily preparing for crossing into mainland Italy.
In their later years, mum and dad destroyed many of their letters and I have the remaining few. Unfortunately, they are not easy to read, some written at night whilst manning the radio and always in pencil.
He talks about coming under fire and jumping into a hole, thinking as he did so that the other soldier was German because of the the similarities in the helmet. His reaction was Blimey, a Yank!
He also mentions two friends, one was killed in action and the other received injuries to both arms. Unable to write, he asked dad to write a letter to his mum for him. It’s what friends do, dad says.
