Letters from xxa and xxb

(Having trouble posting pictures on here, hopefully the files I mention are at the bottom of the post).

I posted some time ago about a relative who was in the above camps and that I had recently found his letters and postcards. I then moved house and "lost" them. I have now re-found them and are going through getting them in date order etc prior to transcribing.

This is going to be quite an effort as I estimate there to be upwards of 200 of them and of course the writing is difficult to figure out sometimes. From the few I have read at random they are also pretty mundane: "please send socks...received socks, thank you...".

I have pulled out a couple of things of interest to share:

1) This makes me laugh: a letter from my relative's father to C/O asking of whereabouts of son (early 1940, about to be shipped to BEF). C/O says can't tell you which country, very secret etc. then suggests he write to his son c/o BEF France!
2) More poignant this one: Richard was captured on 21st May 1940. I can only imagine the horror of his parents waiting at home until this note arrived from the Red Cross on 31/07/40 saying he was safe.

 

I look forward to reading any of the letters you post. I guess the censors prevented him writing about the true nature of Camp life though the boredom was a big problem.

 

Hi Barbara, I have got through transcribing his letters from enlistment (15/11/39) to just before embarking for France (early April 1940). I know that he was captured on 21/5/40 in Belgium so I will soon be onto the POW cards and letters.

I will post here (or PM you) the Word doc when I have got a decent amount of letters done.

Tim

 

P.S. An interesting point relating to the Red Cross notification of capture I posted above; you see that at the bottom of the form is handwritten "He is well", which I took to be a personal touch based on information received. However, I was looking through a POW memoir last week which has some photos including of the Red cross notification for that soldier, it has the exact same notation, same handwriting as well!