PRIVATE FREDERICK LOUIS MINNS,

Suffolk Regiment

HE WROTE to his girlfriend Eva Willingham, a doctor’s housekeeper in the village of Bures St Mary, Suffolk. He died, aged 29, four months later, while Eva’s family home was hit by a German bomb, killing her parents, grandmother and cousin. She never married and died in 1993.

‘MY OWN dear, I had eight hours continuous sleep last night which is the most since this gaff started. I have had my clothes off once, and that only for a bath, otherwise all that comes off when I sleep is my boots… Although on one side are the sounds of war, on the other are the more peaceful sounds of church bells which remind me so much of England, and you darling, and all that might have been… One never appreciates the country lanes, which must look lovely and green and full of flowers, so much as when one is torn from them and unable to return yet!’