My grandfather, Ernest Payne, and his brother, Fred, were killed within a month of each other in the first 5 weeks following the D-Day landings.
The two letters reproduced here are from my grandfather to my grandmother.
The first is a letter written on the crossing to Normandy on D-Day. The second is his final letter, 2 days later, the night before he was killed in his battalion’s first battle in Normandy. His brother was killed a month later in the battalion’s second battle.
The letters were found under my grandmother’s bed when she died over 50 years later. She never remarried and would never discuss what happened to my grandfather.
More than a decade after my grandmother’s death, I visited my grandfather and great-uncle’s graves in Normandy and began an obsession with finding our what happened. I spent over 10 years researching their journey, piecing it together from my grandfather’s other letters, war diaries, historical records and books recounting eye-witnesses. I compiled them into a book which I now hope to publish.
Second letter:
