Starting to read and sort

https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/delightful-momentous-task

A long job to sort these war-letters (WW2) out into chronological order. At present I am skimming through and putting into ‘year packets’. 

Letters were so obviously so important at such a time, and I think my mother must have had to search her brain to make them interesting, and he couldn’t talk much of war work, and all would presumably be passing through the hands of censors.  I wonder whether therefore their letters took longer to arrive when written in Welsh?? So far I’ve only found one so. He wasn’t too fluent and only attempted it when he found someone who could check it for him! She thought at one time something has been cut by the censor and he thought it might have been Welsh phrases, but said it was OK for her to write in Welsh anyway. It looks as if the letter he wrote in Welsh was after that though! I wonder whether I will find whether it reached her? Maybe I will find an intervening letter where this question has been solved! 

And so their friendship and courtship progressed only by letters. It is a bit tantalizing only having one set, his, with references to the letters received

At the end they owned that thus they had may be got to know each other better than if they hadn’t been parted. But it was hard, especially as post erratic and had to work out which letter was being replied to. I think sometimes there were long gaps and then a number all at once! When he decided to propose he did it impulsively by telegram, and forgot she would probably want a letter too, and again with delays and his work movements and her reply telegram and letter, patience was needed, and learned. So, when he wrote when all was truly sorted, he was very effusive and bubbling over. He did have a way with words. This is one I have found and found it very moving. I typed it out for my sister and a few family members who might like to read it despite it being personal. It took a long time, And that was just one, though one of the longer ones. He also looked ahead too to the work necessary to get a job etc after the war.

You probably share more in a letter than in phone calls and texts, and letters that take days to arrive at destination and cost, make you think more about what you are writing than quick emails.

But still it must have been hard. and post-war it must have been easy for some to rush into marriage with little courtship and knowledge of each other or even to rush into affairs and much hurt, after such long exiles.

It is interesting to read of efforts to keep his mind active especially in slack or monotonous work periods, by devouring whatever odd selection of books he could find and at one point was reading a book on accounting, not that he’d every want such a job, but felt it useful to pick up a bit of knowledge of it! He speaks sometime of making a kitchen out of petrol cans, and a bed out of wood and wire, and of very thorough de-lousing of a bed – but the insects were well back in a a few days.. 

Not sure yet whether some should be scanned to increase the clarity of faded ink, but I don’t think they could be converted from longhand to computer text by character-recognition software. So need to get more sorted before deciding what to summarise, what to scan, what to type.

Again, I have added this under under Inspiration Point  [IP: Waking up one morning you find a letter on your doormat .....], thinking of my mother like many others' delight when seeing an airmail letter on their doormat in those days.