I have a thousand letters and a diary written by my parents, Gladys and Len Lally, from 1939 to 1945. From these, and with much research at regimental archives etc, I have written up a story of their war.
Most biographies are of the famous but what is interesting here is that my father was an ordinary soldier and my mother at home in the blitz. Their lives are described in great detail, fears, problems, daily events, arguments by post – things that are not often recorded.
My father was in the Royal Signals and he wrote home from France in early 1940 and about his dreadful escape from Boulogne before Dunkirk. He returned to France on D Day +2, witnessed the German surrender at Luneburg Heath and was with the first British troops to enter Berlin for the Potsdam Conference. All this was written about almost daily.
