Author(s): Deborah Montgomerie

New Zealand

Letter Writing In The Second World War This book traces the emotional and psychological ways by which New Zealanders made sense of the upheavals of war. It shows movingly and graphically that NZ soldiers were not inarticulate and insensitive 'hard men' but kept their sense of life before and after the war by the messages of love, hope and longing that they sent back home. Love in Time of War tells three stories brought to life by wartime correspondence. Bob Wilson, a Northland man serving in the Middle East, writes to his parents about route marches, desert camps and army food; Gay Gray, yearning for her absent soldier husband, describes Wellington during the invasion scare of December 1941; Jack Lewis stays in touch with his Auckland wife and daughters with jokes about scabby kids and fellow soldiers who pinch silk undies from Italian ladies. Behind all the stories lurk the anxieties of war. We too wait to find out what the future is going to bring, caught up in the drama and uncertainty of a crucial period in New Zealand history. First published July 2005.