PRIVATE EDDIE GARNHAM,

Signal Section, 1st Suffolk Company, 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment

EDDIE wrote to his wife Mabel and spoke of their newborn daughter

Joylyn. Now 81 and living in Swindon, Wiltshire, his daughter says he became a prisoner of war and she was seven when he returned home.

‘He was very quiet, so maybe that changed him. It’s sad my mother never got to see the poem he wrote for her as I don’t know if he ever showed that emotion again.’ The couple went on to have a son and Eddie died in 1980 from cancer at the age of 69.

‘MY OWN darling Mabe. Glad to hear that you and our darling baby are keeping well and happy… Fancy our little Joylyn has put on 12oz. Gosh, you don’t know how happy it has made me and I bet she looks the picture of health now that she is as brown as a berrie, bless her little heart. She is the best Baba in the world and she certainly has the best mummy... Won’t it be wonderful, my Darling, to get peace again and to live and love together again just us three… I never told you I was a poet. Well, I wrote a few verses and you will have to forgive me if you think they are terrible. To my darling Mabe and Babe, from your everlasting and true husband Eddie xxxxxxxxx.’