This letter was included in a bundle of letters written to my mother by her fiancé during WW2. Asher was another old friend, possibly an early boyfriend, whom she’d met when he was training as a doctor and she was training as a nurse at the Booth Hall Children’s Hospital in Manchester.
Asher joined the army as soon as he’d qualified although, as a doctor, he could have stayed in the UK. But his parents were Polish Jews who’d been brought to England as children and raised in Whitechapel. Joining the British army and fighting overseas, Asher had a lot to lose – but also a lot more reason to fight.
Three weeks after writing this letter to my mother, Asher was killed in Italy.
