The World War Two home front: mail from
forces serving overseas
Letters from a soldier overseas in World War Two (ww2)
The following letters were offered to me for scanning by my cousin, Anne Davey.
They were from her father, Jim Cole, who was stationed in Palestine (now Israel)
for most of the the Second World War and were to our mutual grandmother who was living
with my mother and me in Edgware. During my uncle's service, he had no leave
back home in England for five years. So Anne never saw her father during this
time.
I wonder whether these wartime letters from Palestine
are typical of wartime letters from men serving in other parts of the world.
If you have any information, I would be pleased to hear from you.
Pat Cryer.
The letters are of general interest for several reasons: One is their very
small size. It seems that the army found it cheaper or more convenient to reduce
copy all the letters to about a quarter of their original size before sending
them on to their destination. They arrived on very thin paper, somewhat like that
of till receipts today and were difficult to read because the writing had become
so small. Only one page was allowed for each letter. I don't know how often
letters home were allowed.
Forces letter, October 1942.
Hover the cursor over a thumbnail for a larger
image.
I have started with this letter, although it
is not the earliest, because it is a useful introduction to the set.
Even looking at the enlarged image, you may
find the text difficult to read. In practice, the size is pretty much
the same as the original, depending on how your browser is set up. I
am sure that my grandmother would have needed a magnifying glass to
read it.
Also of interest is the time that my uncle says
it took for letters to arrive. A letter posted on the 10th of August
arrived on the 1st of October.
Use a magnifying glass is you would like to
read more detail, or copy the image into a graphics software package
for enlarging.
Forces letter, June 1943.
I have allowed this letter to enlarge to slightly
more than its actual size because - being handwritten - it would be
very difficult indeed to read otherwise.
This letter confirms the six-week transit time.
Otherwise it really says very little, other
than normal pleasantries, and shows how difficult it must have been
to limit what one had to say to a single page - especially as armed
forces personnel would
not have been allowed to talk about what they were doing for the war effort.
Men probably felt that it was simplest not to start on anything of
any
significance, especially to their mothers. I suspect that letters to
wives and sweethearts, would have been different, and much more closely
written.
Forces letter, August 1942.
This letter is the earliest that has survived,
and perhaps not surprisingly it is rather more nostalgic than the others.
My uncle says that he sent his mother a
greetings telegram
for her birthday and is longing for home. (In fact he was to be away
for three more years.) The letter mentions how much
Wratting is in his thoughts, particularly
as the house there had been sold following the death of his father.
Forces letter, January 1943.
In this letter, my uncle writes of the news
of the air raids on London and notes that the roof is off the building
where he used to work.
He also mentions bars of chocolate and bars
of Lifebuoy soap sent out to the soldiers as a goodwill gesture by the
Daily Sketch, a popular British newspaper of the time. He chose the
chocolate rather than the soap as presumably he got in early enough
for there still to be the choice!
Forces letter, September 1943.
This letter is the last that has survived.
My uncle mentions how careful he has to be of
sunburn out there in Palestine.
He also mentions that his mother's latest letter
sounded rather like the diary of an undertaker, with so many people
dying. Presumably this was from the bombing, but he did not say.
He also mentions that the war has helped him
to lose weight.
Christmas card from a soldier serving overseas
World War Two British Forces Christmas card sent to my
great aunt from her nephew serving in Africa, 1944. Probably reduced
copied onto a small single sheet of very thin paper
This Christmas card was sent to my great aunt by her nephew, Clifford
Clarke. It was forwarded
to me as a scan by my second cousin, so I never saw the original. However, it
is reasonable certain that it arrived in reduced format, just like the letters,
and on the same thin duplication paper.
The card carries no personal information other than the signature of the
sender, in this case 'Cliff'. Nevertheless it is interesting for itself. I was
told it was sent when Cliff was a sapper in South Africa. According to definitions
on the internet, a sapper is a military engineer who lays or detects and disarms
mines, digs trenches or performs a variety of combat engineering duties, such
as bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, demolitions, field defences,
road and airfield construction and repair, etc.
