Daughter’s joy as World War II couple’s cheeky, loving letters discovered 80 years on

Fred and Elwyn Mortley were a private and ‘reserved’ couple. But the secrets of their World War II romance have been revealed in hundreds of love letters dating back 80 years. Read them here.

Would you read your parents’ long-lost love letters, penned long before you were born?

It’s a question Lynne Smith never thought she’d face or have the chance to consider.

But this has become the 72-year-old’s reality after letters between her parents, Fred and Elwyn Mortley, written during World War II were discovered beneath her childhood home.

“It’s amazing. I never knew they existed,” Lynne said

Mr and Mrs Mortley weren’t a couple who spoke about the past, according to Lynne.

She knew they got engaged during WWII, later married and built a home on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and that they “respected each other”, but that, she said, was about it.

No first date story. No moment he popped the question. No detail. Growing up, Lynne’s only clue to her parents’ romance were her mother’s short diary entries: “Received a letter from Fred.”

Lynne Smith's parents Frederick Henry Arthur Mortley and Elwyn Betty Mortley wrote love letters to each other during WWII. Picture by Richard Gosling

Mr and Mrs Mortley, Frederick and Elwyn. Picture: Supplied

In the years since, she said she had often wondered about the contents of the letters, but assumed she’d never know — her private, “reserved” parents passed away almost three decades ago, and their beloved home packed up and sold with no trace of their writing.

But last week, everything changed when the home’s current owners put out a call for help to find surviving members of the Mortley family on social media, after stumbling across a box tucked away in the house’s underground storage, full of letters addressed to Sergeant F Mortley and Elwyn B. Wombold.

The box of letters, recently discovered beneath the Mortley family’s former home.

A friend of Lynne’s saw the post and quickly got in touch, which left her in “total shock”.

“(I was) very emotional and cried. I rang (my sons) immediately and a few very close friends who knew mum and dad very well.”

Despite being 80 years old, the letters are in almost immaculate condition. Bundled together with twine rope and thread, written in sprawling handwriting.

While Lynne now lives in Queensland and is yet to read the entire contents of the box of letters, she first gave The Daily Telegraph the opportunity to read through them. And what they show is an incredible love story.

In a love note, dated January 1945, while sitting in an army barracks, 27-year-old Fred wrote to Elwyn, then aged 20: “I do long for the day when I can actually hold you in my arms and kiss you til my heart sings. I am so madly in love with you, darling that my memories and daydreams carry me away on a cloud into an unconscious space,” he pens.

Meanwhile, Elywn, a “disciplinarian” and serious lady in Lynne’s memory, is instead a cheeky girl who teased her husband to be and longed for his safe return.

Sergeant Frederick Henry Arthur Mortley was posted away in World War II. Picture: Richard Gosling

A letter Fred wrote to his then-fiance Elwyn in 1945.

“Hello sweetheart, are you behaving yourself tonight? I hope not taking any strange women out seeing it is our Wednesday night,” she wrote.

In another, she penned: “I’m a poor miserable kid when you’re not here darling.”

The letters show a new side of her parents Lynne never knew existed.

“It’s just two people that I never recognised. It’s quite bizarre. I never saw the cheeky side of them like that … that beautiful, loving connection between them,” she said.

“They were always very kind to each other. But I never saw that, you know, touchy feely kissing on the cheek type action.”

Over the course of almost 500 letters, the couple discussed life in the midst of World War II. Everything is different, yet in some ways, nothing has changed.

In a letter dated August 24th, 1945, Elwyn complained to Fred that the full moon has driven her nutty.

“I’m in a mad mood as usual – must be the full moon, I suppose. You had better watch out, darling or you may have a mad woman on your hands,” she wrote.

In another, Fred teased Elwyn for rooting for a footy team from a different area.

“You barrack for Woomba? And live at Ipswich. What am I to do? You don’t play fair,” he wrote.

In another, Fred was pressed on whether wedding bells were still on his mind.

“Are you still of the same mind about being married when you come home, or seeing that the war is over, do you think we should wait until you get settled down,” Elwyn wrote.

“I expect you think I’m a pest, but I don’t think you realise just what we poor females have to do to prepare for a wedding.”

Fred and Elwyn Mortley on their wedding day in 1946- mere months after Elwyn’s letter. Picture: Richard Gosling

A letter from Elwyn to Fred.

WWII is an ever-present backdrop of the letters. Fred’s are transcribed with an army-issued memo “any references to shipping or troop movements will result in the delay or mutilation of your letters”. The couple rarely discuss the war directly, but there’s complaints about the postal service and discussions of those they’ve lost. In one letter mentions a woman they know had to wait two years to find out her son had died because the letter was lost, while in another Fred complained to Elwyn a downpour had seen his tent collapse in the middle of the night.

“Such is life in the army and I sincerely hope it won’t be long before I am out of it for good,” he lamented.

In another letter, dated two weeks before World War II officially ended, Elwyn wrote: “I’m listening to the news and it sounds pretty good for you to be home before long my darling. Gee, I hope they mean it, honey.”

Lynne is eager to be reunited with her parents’ hundreds of letters. Picture: Richard Gosling

As to how the letters stood the test of time, Lynne suspects her father hid the letters away because he wanted his children to one day find them.

“He kept them for all those years. I feel deep down, he did want us to find them one day,” she said.

With hundreds of letters to still be read inside the box, this is a love story which is just getting started.

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