J A Hudson seated in second row back, fifth from left
John Arthur Hudson’s wartime letters to his Mother, Father and brother Ian, March 1944 – August 1945.
My Dad, John Arthur Hudson was born on the 24th August 1920.
At his christening the vicar was confused or misinformed or under the influence and named him ‘Arthur John Hudson’ but this was rarely spoken of.
He grew up in an unexceptional terraced house in Harrow where his father [Francis Reginald], a civil servant, enjoyed gardening and his mother [Dorothy Mary née Crabbe] did I am not sure what, she ran the small household with my father and his younger brother Ian. There is mention in these letters of ‘the office’ so I imagine she was working during this period. She was an expert flower arranger. Both Francis and Dorothy died when I was fairly young. My remembrance of their house is of a lush, dark, Victorian style of decoration. He was a tall man who smoked a pipe. In visits to their house I was fascinated by a brass fly, the size of a bar of soap, whose wings lifted up to reveal a small ashtray and striking strip for Swan Vestas matches.
They were not flighty people and not in the higher echelons of the middle class but they believed in education and both boys were academic and clever. They went to the City of London school where my father recalled being fined a farthing by a maths teacher each time a mistake was made.
Perhaps as a consequence of this my father decided to concentrate on Classics and went to Jesus College, Oxford in 1939 or 1940 where, incidentally he met my future uncles Iolo [Davies, my mother’s brother] and John [or Jack] Cole, who married my mothers younger sister Gwen. Ian also was at Oxford.
War broke up and after two years of study they were conscripted, being offered a valid degree or the option to return, post war, to complete their degrees.
These letters suggest that he chose the former option – I am uncertain. His future brothers in law returned to college but it was not a happy time for them, having been through what they had – and with many of their former cohort killed in action. He was given a first.
So in 1942 he went to training in Aldershot, after which he joined the Signals Regiment and saw service in North Africa and then in Italy. These letters are all from Italy and range from March 1944 to August 1945. There must have been earlier letters from 1942-43/early 44 but sadly these are assumed to be lost, as are the letters written to him.
At one level there are recurring themes, mundane yet significant to the writer: mail deliveries, weather, leave policy, clothing, reading materials, colds and ailments. But at the other end they relate to the most significant happenings at the end of the war. Ian’s progress into the Royal Navy is a recurring topic. Occasionally there is a lighter moment of serendipity.
The key letter in this collection is dated 31st May 1945 subsequent to the German surrender in Italy and written after a relaxation of censorship regulations which allowed him to detail his movements 1942-1945. [His handwriting is singular and can be quite difficult. Where impossible to read I have either marked as ‘unclear’ or made a guess which is prefixed with a question mark.]
For me the most moving part was when he drove an army jeep into the Italian Alps; he picked an edelweiss which he sent to his mother and which we now still have.
JA Hudson war letters final
