Primroses - Saturday 8th April 1944

 

2/Lt Richard Williams

NB.  ->               61^st Recce Regt

Home Forces

 

Saturday 7^th (sic)

Chotie Darling,

                                    Many thanks for letter.

            I must begin this with an apology for having omitted to congratulate you on your successful action*.  In actual fact I had already guessed that it was your crowd who did it, as heard about it even before I got your letter.

            Ref. leave.  At the moment all leave is cancelled and I don’t entertain much hope of getting away.  However you could meet me in Soton, at any rate, for a few evenings.  Failing this I could come over to P’stone I expect.  At the moment I don’t know how things stand.  We’ll simply have to wait and see.

            We’re under canvas at the moment – I have a tent of my own, luckily, as I preferred to erect my own bivouacs rather than sleep four or five in one.  The liability side shows shocking food, etc, but there are some lovely clusters of primroses in the woods to help the assets.

            Having quite a good time here though there’s no beer for miles round.  Must close here as there’s no more note paper – Junior’s pinched the last.

                                                            All my love

                                                                        Dicker

    RKWilliams 

 

*Presumably the defence of Bristol against the 'Baby Blitz' raid of 27^th March 1944. 

**Southampton, a major port on the south coast.

***Parkstone, Poole – where Chotie’s family lived.

****Ronnie Jury

© Chotie Darling

Spring woodland flowers (primroses in centre surrounded by dog violets, wood anemones in background). Copyright Martin Warren.

Eric Postles’ troop (10 Troop, B Squadron) had managed to secure leave:

“We moved by rail to Romsey, then into tented camps at Nightingale Woods on the Romsey-Southampton road.  Special permission was given for our troop to go on leave before the area was sealed at midnight.  While on leave I first met Gladys Dandy, my future wife, who was the guest solo singer at Burscough Methodist Chapel on 10 April 1944.” (Extracts from ‘My War Years’ by John Eric Postles ISO used by kind permission of the author.)

Eric remembers his troop was the last to go on leave – the special permission had been obtained by Colonel Mount - and he arrived home unexpectedly.  Once back in Nightingale Wood there were a couple of exercises in preparation for D Day, one of them finishing up on Bournemouth beach*.  (Eric Postles pers.comm.)

*the other was possibly Exercise Fabius II, the rehearsal for Assault Force "G" (elements of the British 50 Infantry Division and attached units, which were to assault Gold Beach).  This took place between 23rd April and 7th May.  The force marshalled in areas C and B, embarked from Southampton and Lymington, and landed on Hayling Island between Chichester and Portsmouth.

Eric Postles wearing Reconnaissance badge

 

10^th April 1944 – Soviet forces capture Odessa, an important Ukrainian city and port on the Black Sea.  The Germans escaped by sea.