Basic Training - 1940 Royal Signals: The Love Letters of Private Roy Barton (Paperback or Softback)

‘A unique record of service life in World War 2.’ 'A wartime love story like no other.'
Recently found is Roy Barton's hoard of 250 love letters he wrote to his pretty, young wife Phyllis during World War 2. Recently married and desperately missing the love and companionship of his wife, Roy wrote long letters to Phyllis at her home in Somerset. A gifted writer with a fluid style and eye for detail, Roy reveals to us the commitment and intimacy of their relationship and the pain that conscription into the Royal Signals in 1940 caused them both. Here are the first twenty four letters as he begins his Basic Training in Yorkshire. As he tells us of the army's demands and routines, the characters of his fellow conscripts and the friendliness of the Yorkshire people, we also hear of his own doubts about his worthiness to become an army officer. Written to his wife with love, warmth and humour this is a unique record of one man’s Basic Training to mould him into a fighting man in the British Army.

The full hoard of 250 letters can also be found on KINDLE under the title 'DEAREST PHYL - LETTERS of LOVE and WAR'.
This book of Roy's wartime letters include photos and documents from his Basic Training in Yorkshire to his time in Normandy and Northern France as he travelled with General Montgomery’s HQ through war torn Belgium and into Germany. Roy’s love letters to Phyllis also describe the demands of each day, the destruction of German tanks and armour at Falaise, the French peasant farmers, Belgian black marketeers, leave in Paris and Brussels, the characters and gossip from his mess as well as their hopes for a ‘cottage in the country’ and plans for a baby at the war’s end.
Over 90,000 words - an amazing wartime testimony of a conscript in love and war - to be found in 'Dearest Phyl - Letters of Love and War'.