David Holbrook
Letter to his parents
France (Normandy), 18 June 1944
From MS Add. 9987

Transcript:

France
Sunday

My dear Mother & Father

The stuff is still flying. I now have a troop – have taken over from David Brooke [who] was killed about D+2. The old gnome was injured, but is back with us again now. We have unpleasant periods of waiting when all kinds of mortars & shells drop on us. Continuous advance is elating, but sitting in a hot beachhead is a bit nerve-racking. We are all rather keen to get on & finish him off. I am rather keen to return to be a student, when Nazism is broken. One of Rommel’s HQs is near here – opulently furnished & full of Nazi slogans. They are like brutal overgrown boyscouts. They fight cleverly & dirtily – chiefly in the evenings. May they collapse soon, with their luxurious parasite mansions in France blown up from under them.