Joan Lightning

With All My Love Joan Lightning

Letters home from a soldier in World War 2 between Oct 1939 and June 1941. Arthur Rowland was 37 when he joined the RAMC in 1939. At 37 yrs old, he did not have to join up, and his strong Christian faith meant that he did not believe in killing other human beings, but he wanted to do what he could. Stationed at the 4th General Hospital in La Baule, France, he wrote home to his wife, Emma, every few days. After the fall of France he was evacuated under fire from St. Nazaire, after which he was stationed in Leeds. There he underwent still-experimental walking-stalk skin grafts on old burns on his neck (left by radium mould treatment as a boy.) The skin grafts were successful, but the procedure damaged the nerves in his neck, leaving him with reduced mobility in his arms. He was invalided out of the army in 1941. Rarely mentioning the war, his letters offer an interesting glimpse into the home life of an ordinary Christian family in the late 30s and early 40s.