My Dear Bessie
“My brother Peter followed in 1949. We became characters in a post-war story and for almost sixty years were unaware of the letters, romance and drama that had brought us to life.
This changed on a visit to my recently widowed father in 2004. He held out a small blue box and asked: ‘Shall I throw these away, or will you take them?’ They were his war letters. He said no one should read them until he and my mother were both dead. Following his instructions, I waited to open the box until 2008.
I p...ulled out the tightly folded bundles and found 500 individual letters written in a clear, faultless hand on thin blue airmail paper or on NAAFI headed notepaper. I read the half million words over a period of several weeks and immersed myself in a wartime world of love, longing and frustration.
I was in the desert with my dad as he recorded the death of pigs and rats; I was with my mother in London braving bombs and rockets. Through their words they were animated again in my mind – energetic, passionate, clear-sighted, wise and loveable.MoreLess
This changed on a visit to my recently widowed father in 2004. He held out a small blue box and asked: ‘Shall I throw these away, or will you take them?’ They were his war letters. He said no one should read them until he and my mother were both dead. Following his instructions, I waited to open the box until 2008.
I p...ulled out the tightly folded bundles and found 500 individual letters written in a clear, faultless hand on thin blue airmail paper or on NAAFI headed notepaper. I read the half million words over a period of several weeks and immersed myself in a wartime world of love, longing and frustration.
I was in the desert with my dad as he recorded the death of pigs and rats; I was with my mother in London braving bombs and rockets. Through their words they were animated again in my mind – energetic, passionate, clear-sighted, wise and loveable.MoreLess
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