Captain Robert Randal Rylands to Jennifer Olive Traill
Sent by: Captain Robert Randal Rylands
Sent to: Jennifer Olive Traill
Date of letter: 27 July 1944
My father, Bob Rylands, was a Captain (later, a Major) in the KSLI and served in WWII, including landing on Sword beach on D Day. His account of this experience is quoted by Max Hastings in his book Overlord.
Through the whole of the war, my father wrote to my mother, mostly letters but also poems; it was in effect an epistolary courtship. As soon as war ended, they married. It was a source of much distress to my father that, when they retired and moved home, she threw away many of his letters. However, we saved all that were left after their deaths and my husband transcribed all of them, as they were written in pencil which continues to fade as the years pass.
They reveal much about the experience of war, both on a deeply personal level and more broadly about the events of WW2 in its final years. The letters begin in June 1944 and finish in 1945, with a poem my father wrote looking back over the experience. (He became, as I did, an English teacher and was highly articulate.) The letters also include those to his mother whom he doted on.
The letter we have chosen is dated 27.7.44 and is an account of the D Day attack; it includes descriptions of his senior officer’s wounding which meant that he had to take over command. It also touches on comrades’ deaths and conveys his fear as well as use of British understatement. Beneath the gripping and upsetting war descriptions floats their love story, which, as their daughter, I find charming and moving.
