Hidden letters of wartime love

11:01am Thursday 23rd October 2008

A BUNDLE of love letters found in a suitcase have revealed details of a moving wartime love story.

When Wynne Curtis died, her three nieces were shocked to discover a suitcase containing hundreds of love letters written during the Second World War to her first husband, Harold “Mickey” Brooks.

They were bundled together, unopened, and marked “No Trace RAF Indian Command”. He hadn’t received any of them.

Wynne had married Mickey in an east London register office during the Blitz in September 1940.

She wrote to him every single day, detailing her life back in Preston Road, Leytonstone, until she rented out her home there and moved in with her in-laws in Higham Hill Road, Walthamstow.

She told him how she was surviving the bombs and hoping against hope that the letters would be forwarded to him, wherever he was stationed.

Each letter started with the words, “Dear Heart...”

However, Wynne received only one letter from him, dated January, 1942 and posted in Durban, South Africa, then nothing until October 1943 when a postcard, dated Christmas Day, 1942, arrived saying that he was in good health.

But the truth was that Mickey was dying from dysentery in the jungles of Java in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

His best friend, Sid Curtis, promised to contact Wynne if anything happened to Mickey.

At 6ft tall but weighing just 5st when he was liberated, and suffering from malaria, Sid finally arrived on her doorstep in Walthamstow with Mickey’s wristwatch.

Several years later they married and rarely spoke of the war. They preferred to recall for their nieces the good times. “Good memories nourish the soul,” they said.

Wynne stayed in Leytonstone, and later moved to The Vines, in Clarendon Road, Woodford.

One of the nieces, Jenny Davis, a writer and director, adapted the heart-rending letters into a book, Dear Heart, published in 1998, and a play.

Always interested in oral histories, Ms Davis founded Agelink Theatre in Australia in 1993, writing and directing many shows based on the memories of senior citizens. Dear Heart has been playing to sell-out audiences across Australia, where the family now live, and will get its London premiere at the Kings Head Theatre in Islington from Tuesday November 4.

Jenny Davis’ daughter, Rebecca Davis, and her real-life husband, Stuart Halusz, play Wynne and Mickey in this poignant play, featuring music from the period.