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Saturday 3/2/40
L/Bdr Faulkner F.A.
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B.E.F.
Dear Dad,
Arrived safely at destination yesterday afternoon. You will have probably have got the Field Service Card I posted to you on our arrival at the port this side. Grand crossing.
The weather here is quite Spring-like today. Will be sending short letter at first opportunity.
Love to all.
Frank
(censor Gibson - censor stamp number 655)
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| Frank's post card home of 3 February 1940 with Censors pen on the address. |
I must mention while I think of it that prior to going to France in October 1939 my Regiment the 53rd (City of London) anti-aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery was joined by a new intake, Militia Boys, all 21 years of age. Quite a few of them had come straight from prison, mainly burglars or GBH, etc. Actually they were real characters, many cockneys, cheerful, tough and great companions in a wartime army. One burglar named Silver, what an apt name, used to tell me stories of his escapades climbing drain pipes of flats in an exclusive part of the West End of London and tell me of his loot. Actually he was quite a modest chap, well spoken as compared with another ex-prisoner, Wally Berryman, he was a hard nut, but very experienced in picking locks which we found useful when we had to break into a house in the village of Vaudesencourt only to discover a woman hanging from the rafters in the loft, and I remember particularly her tongue was hanging out. Wally used just an army knife to prize his way into one of those huge locks they had on French farmhouses. He took 20 minutes to succeed, sweating like a pig although it was bitterly cold weather in the Winter of 1939/40.
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