This letter, written on a NAAFI (Navy Army & Air Force Institutes) letter form, was sent by Holbrook from the Normandy beachhead to his parents in Norwich. It was dated ‘Sunday’ by Holbrook and postmarked [Monday] 19 June by the Field Postal Service. Holbrook describes the Nazis as ‘brutal overgrown boyscouts’, and says the Germans ‘fight cleverly & dirtily – chiefly in the evenings.’ An amended version of the letter was printed in Flesh wounds. The reference on the second page to ‘robot planes’, together with the ‘Sunday’ dating and the postmark, helps to ascertain that the letter was written on 18 June: the first V1 attack on London was on 13 June. The edited version of the letter which appeared in Flesh wounds was supposedly written by the novel’s protagonist, Paul Grimmer, on D+2, some ten days earlier.