PRIVATE SYD ROSE,

C Company, 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment SYD wrote to his ‘darling wife’ Vera and daughters Sally and Beverly. He suffered a shrapnel wound at Dunkirk and it was another five years before he made it back to Colchester, Essex, having been taken prisoner for the remainder of the war.

Back home, he returned to his job at an engineering firm and the couple, pictured left on their wedding day, had three more children – twins Bruce and Bridget and daughter Stephanie.

Bridget, 73, said it was the thought of his family that kept her father going. ‘It’s wonderful this letter has turned up again after all these years.’ Syd, pictured inset below in 1928, died in 1985, aged 77, and never bore ill-will to those who held him captive.

‘MY OWN darling wife. I am quite alright and longing for this war to finish by June I hope pray God. It seems that I shall be right… There is not much I can say but I keep smiling and I know darling how you are also trying too… ‘You know, sweetheart, if you don’t hear from me for perhaps weeks, I shall still be in safe hands so, my dearest, you can look for that glorious day. I pray every night and sometimes every five minutes of the day that this war will soon end… You, my darling, shall always be in my arms. You’re always in my prayers and thoughts, the very first and last of each day, to make the future a peaceful one to continue our married life and love to the day of new awakening when if we are His chosen people which I hope darling so, we shall go to a better land where love and peace abode… ‘Bless you sweetheart…’