Front-line letters kept our love alive

for letters sent between soldiers serving in the field and their families back home. Several are e-blueys, which means they were sent over secure email and printed on blue paper before delivery either to me in Bristol, or to Simeon on the front line when he served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sadly, at the end of this month, the e-bluey will be no more, thanks to cost-cutting by the Ministry of Defence. The £1 million saved will be reinvested, a spokesman said, in “welfare provision for our service personnel” and there will be new arrangements to help Army families stay in touch. Amanda and her husband, Major Simeon Prowse. Below, some of her grandmother’s treasured letters from her own husband serving in the war

I hope whatever they come up with is at least a match for the e-blueys that made my husband’s time away just about tolerable for us both.

My first dropped through the letterbox in 2008, when Simeon was posted to Iraq while I stayed at home with our two sons, then nine and 10. I held it to my chest as sadness, relief and pain overwhelmed me.

In a war zone, communication can be sporadic: you can’t just pick up the phone or ping over a text. I’d be lucky to get a couple of phone calls a month. Simeon assured me that if the worst happened, I’d be informed very quickly. I tried to take comfort from the idea that no news was good news.

But it was those e-blueys that provided the greatest balm. They reminded Simeon of what was waiting for him, and gave me hope that he really would come back to us.

I ritualised the opening of every letter Simeon sent, waiting until I had a good couple of hours alone to sit with a coffee and savour every moment. Reading his words always reduced me to tears. I could hear his voice in my head – to have that, when I genuinely couldn’t know whether I would ever hear it again, always felt like a gift.

On bad days Simeon would keep my letters to him in the map pocket of his uniform. He would sleep with the latest one under his pillow, as did I.

It’s four years since Simeon last served in a war zone; I haven’t read any of the letters since and I don’t know if I ever will. They all sit in a box on top of my wardrobe, tied up with ribbon.

One day, just like my grandmother did with me, I will show them to my own grandchildren. And I expect that they will wonder why mundane bits of family news, printed on scraps of blue paper while their grandfather was away serving his country, could possibly still mean so much.