Letters from xxa and xxb

Discussion in 'Prisoners of War' started by Tim091, Jun 10, 2020.

  1. Tim091

    Tim091 Active Member

    (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.



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    BarbaraWT, JDKR, dbf and 3 others like this.
  2. BarbaraWT

    BarbaraWT Member

    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.
     
  3. Tim091

    Tim091 Active Member

    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
     
  4. Tim091

    Tim091 Active Member

    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!
     

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