I've just been sitting here at the keyboard for the past hour doing something I've never experienced before. :unsure: I'm transcribing a series of letters written during WWII by my late grandfather to his oldest sister back here in Auckland. Sadly, the surviving letters are only a mere fragment of what once existed. My mother recounts a sizeable stack, that she had read at some point many years after the war, which have unfortunately disappeared decades ago. Even still, I'm learning a lot from these ten 'survivors', at least enough to warrant commiting them to digital copy for future reference.
It's a weird sensation to be honest. Here in my hands are pieces of paper that he was holding some 60 years ago and writing on. I can almost see him was sitting there on a motor gunboat in the English channel dipping a fountain pen (I think) into an inkwell and recording fragments of his experiences and and more importantly, his thinking. In one of them he is actually describing sitting next to a radiator to keep warm in -10° C temperatures that is running off a cable rigged up to the local grid while the boat is moored. In another he is describing where on a warf in picture postcard he is sitting whilst putting pen to paper. Details of his surroundings, questions about the happenings back home, little quips and wisecracks about a newborn niece whom he dearly loved, yet never actually saw until she was 4 years old.
Selfnote: And here I thought my facetious bastard nature came handed to in spades from my Dad. Looks like I inherited a recessive smartarse gene through Mum too! :D
*ahem*
Anyway, this sudden spurt of archival activity on my part has been nagging at me to get started for more than a month now since I learned of the existence of these letters. Part of the 'kick in the 'pants for me at this point is the imminent arrival of ANZAC Day (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) on April 25, which is basically the local equivalent of VE Day. There's also just the ever present inquisitiveness I hold towards the guy, simply because a stroke slashed his ability to talk to me when I was seven and seeing his words in print like this gives me a much clearer insight into his thinking than his pained communication efforts of recent years ever could. *silently gives thanks to whoever and however these pieces of paper came to be preserved*
He died in August 2001. I'll remember fondly. I'll try to capture his poor grammar and black humour faithfully. There are also some medals in a little box behind me that I've been meaning to clean up and maybe see about getting new ribbons for . . . hmmm maybe later. Right now I have some words from the past to archive for posterity. ^_^
It's a weird sensation to be honest. Here in my hands are pieces of paper that he was holding some 60 years ago and writing on. I can almost see him was sitting there on a motor gunboat in the English channel dipping a fountain pen (I think) into an inkwell and recording fragments of his experiences and and more importantly, his thinking. In one of them he is actually describing sitting next to a radiator to keep warm in -10° C temperatures that is running off a cable rigged up to the local grid while the boat is moored. In another he is describing where on a warf in picture postcard he is sitting whilst putting pen to paper. Details of his surroundings, questions about the happenings back home, little quips and wisecracks about a newborn niece whom he dearly loved, yet never actually saw until she was 4 years old.
Selfnote: And here I thought my facetious bastard nature came handed to in spades from my Dad. Looks like I inherited a recessive smartarse gene through Mum too! :D
*ahem*
Anyway, this sudden spurt of archival activity on my part has been nagging at me to get started for more than a month now since I learned of the existence of these letters. Part of the 'kick in the 'pants for me at this point is the imminent arrival of ANZAC Day (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) on April 25, which is basically the local equivalent of VE Day. There's also just the ever present inquisitiveness I hold towards the guy, simply because a stroke slashed his ability to talk to me when I was seven and seeing his words in print like this gives me a much clearer insight into his thinking than his pained communication efforts of recent years ever could. *silently gives thanks to whoever and however these pieces of paper came to be preserved*
He died in August 2001. I'll remember fondly. I'll try to capture his poor grammar and black humour faithfully. There are also some medals in a little box behind me that I've been meaning to clean up and maybe see about getting new ribbons for . . . hmmm maybe later. Right now I have some words from the past to archive for posterity. ^_^
