Part of a collection of my inherited family wartime letters, this example was written on 28 November 1945 by my paternal uncle Bill to his older brother Ted while they were both still serving away from home shortly after the war had ended. Their 2 surviving brothers were also still overseas; they had lost another brother in 1942; their uncle who lived with them was killed in the 1941 London Blitz; later, in 1946, they were to lose their father when he died in a terrible accident. At the time the letter was written, Ted was serving in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (‘RAOC’), by then based in Palestine. Bill was serving with the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (‘REME’) attached to the 14th Army, at that time located in Rangoon in Burma (now Myanmar). It was the advance of the 14th Army that had led to the Japanese withdrawal from Rangoon, allowing occupation by the Allies of a vital port. The main thrust of this historically important letter can perhaps be linked to the unfortunate fact that soldiers of the 14th Army were dubbed the ‘Forgotten Army’ because they were largely overlooked by the British press. One of the consequences of this was that the public knew little about them & the difficult conditions they were enduring. Whilst Bill’s words were not directly connected to this, his perception was nevertheless one of a sense of abandonment, a sentiment that would no doubt have also been reflected in the views of comrades similarly waiting to be brought home from the Far East. On page 3 of the letter Bill talks about another of his brothers ‘Felix’ (my dad, Harry). I have never been able to find the news cutting Bill refers to & I don’t know why my dad’s photo was in the newspaper. I’d love to find out.
