This letter is from my father, Lt Colin Ewart Angus – C Squadron Staffordshire Yeomanry, British Liberation Army (BLA) – to his brother David, 5 May 1945. I discovered it when sorting out my family’s letters and photographs from the war years.
At the start of the war, my father was studying at Glasgow vet college. In January 1940 he left college and joined the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in Palestine. In 1942 he went through the Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU) and joined the 10th Hussars, British North African Forces (BNAF). One of his letters from North Africa talks briefly of the regiment’s casualties during the final battles of the Tunisian campaign.
In June 1944 he crossed to Sicily joining the HQ Squadron, 10th Hussars, Central Mediterranean Forces (CMF). Early in 1945 he joined the Staffordshire Yeomanry and later the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). From photographs, we know my father was close to Belsen during its liberation and only briefly mentioned it in his letters, saying that “of these places, they beggar description, and you can believe the worst you hear”.
My father’s letter attached was written a few days before VE day. It mentions “one or two cracks at the Huns”, time getting rest and recreation, roads being “thronged with ex POW of all nationalities” and larger numbers of “Bosch prisoners”, awaiting the armistice and looking forward to coming home. (His later letters tell us he was still in Hanover with BNAF in Feb 1946). Finally, he shares concerns about his father’s health.
After the war my father returned to vet college and qualified as a veterinary surgeon and married my mum Jean Pears in 1953.
Though he never discussed his wartime experiences with the family after the war, he did keep in touch with his wartime friends and comrades, with whom he may have reminisced.
