shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2005-09-02 08:28 pm
shewhomust) wrote2005-09-02 08:28 pm
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On this day: a letter home
989689. L.A.C. Rogers.,
Red Cross Hospital,
Epsom Road,
Durban,
Natal,
So. Africa
2.9.41
Dear Ralph & Edith,
I am afraid it is a long time since I wrote to you but I suppose my letters to Athol Rd. are passed round the family so that you will not have been worrying unduly. I have two good excuses, first that whilst in bed, writing was physically difficult, and since I have been up time passes so quickly that letters get missed in the rush. I have, however, made a point of writing home fairly regularly and I hope that by now at least some of them have arrived safely.
Up to the present I have not had any mail since I left England but I live in daily hope of some arriving. Last week I sent a cable home to make quite sure that you knew I was safe "across the water".
I can get about quite well now although I tire easily and a walk of 300 yds. is about my limit in one stretch. Things are going so well that I will [be] discharged from hospital in a week or a fortnight's time at the most. Then I hope to get some leave which I have arranged to spend at Margate, a little holiday town a few miles from the coast.
Durban is a pretty town and now that I can get about I am learning to appreciate it. It posses[ses] some good buildings, principally large blocks of flats and big hotels which viewed from the sea give the town a "New York" sky-line. The winter climate is wonderful, each day being like a perfect English summer day. Unfortunately the summer is hot and wet, but I suppose I will have moved nearer to the scene of operations before summer arrives.
I have made some good friends here and I shall be sorry to leave when the time
comes. The people of Natal are extremely "British" - more so probably, than the average Englishman and they excel themselves in their treatment of service men. Possibly the existence of a large 5th column - the "Odessa Brandwag" a Afrikaanse Fascist movement - makes them doubly patriotic.
Today is the last of two years of war. It hardly seems that so much time has passed when I think of pre-war days. We commence the 3rd. year with Russia as our ally and this more than makes up for all we lost in the early days of the war. I manage, with the aid of newspapers, to keep up with the war news but I do not hear so much of the "home front" so please do not forget to speed a few letters this way.
The dinner-bell is ringing so I will close now and write later when I have more news.
Love,
Tom
P.S. Have you a photo of baby John you could send me - he must be growing up by
now. TR
Shortly after my father's death, my cousin John (the "baby John" of the postscript) gave me photocopies of some letters my father had written during the war to his parents (his elder brother Ralph and sister-in-law Edith).
My father did not speak much of his war-time experiences; he had been in the meteorological service of the RAF, and described his work as "letting off balloons from the Air Ministry roof in Cairo". But on the voyage out to Africa, the ship had been caught in a storm, and he had broken his hip, which is why this first letter was written from the hospital.
Athol Road was the family home in Sunderland.
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