After my parents died I found their letters in an old handbag in my mother’s wardrobe. I didn’t read them for a long time, thinking them to be too personal but when I did I found invaluable pieces of social history.
My father was a quiet man, and hardly spoke of the horrors he witnessed.
He signed up in 1940 and from a tiny hamlet in rural Shropshire was transferred to began army life in Ely Cambridge before relocating to train in Yorkshire as part of the newly formed 11th Armoured Division.
As part of the traffic division of the Military Police duties involved mapping, signage and eventually dispatch riding.
Although he had spoken of sleeping in orchards (with a rat for company) and the generosity of people in Holland who had little food but still he found an apple in his boot ‘for the English soldier’ ( December 1944), I had no idea until I traced it on a map of the amount of miles he travelled from Normandy (around June 13th) through France, Belgium, Holland, into Germany and finally Moldenit in Schleswig Holstein.
This letter was written in early April 1945 and although I can’t say exactly where Dad was I’m guided by war diaries from 29th Armoured Brigade and I believe this would have been written just before the crossing of the River Weser at Petershagen in Germany.
I chose this letter to share because as well as an insight into the atmosphere and change in mood as they moved from Belgium and Holland into Germany there is reference to the numbers of displaced people travelling on the roads. As with all his letters he asks about life on the farm and the family health, teasing my mother about drinking at the local dance also concerned as in other letters about her painful teeth and plans for dentures. There is a wistfulness too, for happier times, seeing his young niece, memories of a window seat in the village pub and fish and chips.
I’m so happy to be able to share a small part of my father’s story.
