Todays speaker was Jeremy Pickard, ably assisted by his wife, Helen, who gave us a talk entitled “Authentic Voices of WW2”
He explained how his father and mother, Stan and Christabel Pickard, met in Eastbourne during the years preceding WW2, and were happily married until their deaths in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
On Christabel’s death, a host of letters were discovered, giving quite illuminating details about their courtship, love life and married life together during the war years.
Jeremy and Helen read out extracts from these letters which showed very clearly the different moral attitudes existing then when compared to today, especially given that his mother and father were both committed Christians who held no truck with alcohol and foul language! Stan’s rise to become a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy was well documented as was their determination to avoid having children until after the war, a determination which, alas, was doomed to fail!
The tone of the letters was quite light-hearted during the initial stages of the war, but became much more serious when Stan was posted to Lowestoft to serve on MTB’s in the Channel and North Sea.
At this point our talk ended, but it left us all with a feeling of admiration for the spirit adopted by everyone during those difficult days.