My Family History

My mother's Uncle Arthur (aka 'Dick') after the war " Arthur is back from internment but we cannot convey to each other what the past years were like " (1946). The people who want to celebrate "victories" in wars are rarely those who fought in them - because those who do the actual fighting are left with the memories that they'd rather forget about what war is really like.  That was certainly true of my family, not least my Uncle Bert who fought through North Africa and Italy, and my Uncle Noel who did the same before also being parachuted into Greece in 1944. They both knew only too well what it's like to take part in modern warfare - and that's also why both said very little about what they had been through. My own Mum - who worked on the radar stations on the south coast looking out for the rockets that could be landing on her family back in London - also rarely discussed a war which had brought her too much grief and stress. It was only a...

Eileen’s brother, my Uncle Bert, joined the RAF, leaving Auntie Gwen to run the flower shop in West London. After initial training, Bert was told he wasn’t fit to fly but became a radio operator and was posted to North Africa. A chirpy Londoner, Bert sent a series of letters and cards as his units travelled across North Africa and then through Italy. 26/10/43 Rome June 1945 (Bert on left) Dear Eileen It's been a long time since I've been able to write to you but I expect the folk at home have given you news of my movements. I had an enjoyable time in Sicily attached to a Yank squadron and saw quite a bit of the East side of the island ... We were there when the first autumn rains fell, about three days of terrific thunderstorms and torrential rain. After this there was a fine period and the peasants started ploughing the ground that had been dry and cracked a week before. The ploughs are poor wooden efforts that merely scratch the top of the soil .....

Arthur ‘Dick’ Swift, my Mum (Eileen)’s uncle, had left London for France in the early 1920s to become manager of an Imperial Tobacco Company tobacco pipe factory in St. Claude in the Jura, close to the Swiss border. His French wife, Ginette, wrote most of the letter below to Eileen on 17 June 1940, just as the Germans were approaching the town. Even as the ‘phoney-war’ at the end of 1939 was starting, Eileen, my mother, had been determined to continue with her plan to travel to St. Claude to improve her French. Her family were apparently still hopeful that war was going to be avoided and let her travel. Her passport shows that she arrived in France, travelling via Calais, on 21 August 1939. In February 1940, she was given a French identity card valid until August 1942 (!). Her passport stamps also show that Eileen only left Calais to return to England on 2nd April 1940. Below is a transcription and translation of the last letter that Dick's wife, Ginette, was able ...