Dimensions
156 x 235 x 17mm
'Love Letters' contains the moving and intimate letters exchanged between an enlisted soldier at the Front and his wife and six children.
John Leslie Johnson was almost 38 when he joined the AIF in 1940. He was unusual not only because of his age but because he also had a wife and seven dependent children and lived in the rural Victoria at a time when men with children were not automatically accepted to fight, nor were men from the land who were needed to maintain Australia's primary industries.
But John Johnson was accepted, trained in Melbourne and shipped overseas.
'Love Letters' are just that. The letters between Corporal John Johnson and his wife and children, the letters that Josie Johnson kept and that Corporal Johnson carried with him through Palestine, Egypt, Libya and, finally, at Tobruk. The letters were returned to Josie Johnson when her husband died at Tobruk in 1941.
For years they were kept in "Dad's Drawer" protected in the soft cloth of a flour bag. Len Johnson first read them in 1946 and vowed never to touch them again because they were so emotionally painful. But sixty years after his father's death, Len finally printed them - with explanatory links - in a limited edition for his family. They were a record of life at home and on the Front - and of a strong, clear love of a man and a woman and their children.
All the letters are now preserved in the Australia War Memorial in Canberra.
