Dear Bill

This is a digital copy of a letter that John wrote to the US and UK (?) Quaker relief effort (Secours Quaker) located in Paris in France in March 1945. He had just returned from the small town of Vire in lower Normandy where he had spent six weeks working ten hour days putting up temporary accommodation for the population. British bombing in preparation for D Day in June 1944 is said to have destroyed 95% of the buildings in Vire.

John was a conscientious objector and after working with the Pacifist Service Units in the East End (a precursor of post war Social Services) and a spell in Wormwood Scrubs he joined the Quaker relief effort. He worked in the devastated cities of Caen and later Le Havre where a temporary centre for Displaced Persons was known after his name.

I came across the archive of the Secours Quaker after long chats with John through internet searches that took me to the site of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. There a very kind archivist compiled five PDFs of all the correspondence that concerned the Caen and Le Havre Quaker relief operations.

John went on later to work in a small German spa town - the only Quaker centre in Germany - where he met his first wife.