The family secrets Richard learned from his mum’s WWII letters

When Richard Smith finally opened the shoebox of more than 100 letters that his mother, Winifred, wrote home during World War II, he was floored by her ambivalence towards the man who would become her husband and his father.

A physiotherapist from Sydney who stayed in London to do her bit for the war effort, Winifred hinted at suitors other than her then fiancée, Willoughby “Wob” Smith, in her letters.

Richard Smith looking at the collection of his mother’s letters sent from London during WW2. He donated them to the State Library of NSW. Credit: Joy Lai

She also wrote of visiting dying Aussies in hospitals who made jokes to lighten the mood, bemoaned the British reluctance to recognise her colonial qualifications as a physiotherapist, and discussed her ticking biological clock and “crusty uterus”.

Only 18 when his mother died in 1965, Richard waited decades before reading the letters, which Winifred wrote daily to her own mother in Sydney.

When he finally transcribed them, what he read was a gift from the past.

“I loved the letters,” said Richard. They were a window into his mother’s professional and personal life before marriage that his parents had never spoken about.

‘If only I could be a man & fly a spitfire, would I like to riddle some of those devils!’

Winifred Smith writing a letter home to her mother in 1941

But the letters are also a gift for the public as a rare extended record of women’s experience of WWII, which began 85 years ago today.

Most collections of WWII letters are from male soldiers. In contrast, State Library of NSW librarian Rachelle Ayoub said Winifred’s letters gave the perspective of an intelligent woman who was very committed to the war effort. Visitors can see the original letters by using the Ask the Librarian service.

When war broke out, Winifred was 28 and holidaying in France. She decided to stay while Wob, a tin miner, looked after his mines in Nigeria.

Winifred Smith on her wedding day to Willoughby “Wob” Smith in 1946.

The letters are frank. Just before war is declared, Winifred wrote that Wob had asked her to the London Casino. “[It] is an immense thrill, but I wished I liked him thoroughly … All this enjoyment would be perfect with the right one if there is such a thing!”

On her 29th birthday, she said her life before the war as mere child’s play. “After living in London for three weeks of the Blitzkrieg I had become more or less accustomed to unbelievable noise & scenes - but this week has capped everything … They are still extricating bodies … We just never know if we’re going to live to see the morning.”

Richard said the letters revealed that his mother was disappointed at her qualifications not being recognised at the start of the war.

She lived in hope of a hospital job with the Australian Imperial Force and envied service men. “If only I could be a man & fly a spitfire – would I like to riddle some of those devils!” she wrote in April 1941.

The letters charted his mother’s changed mood. Early in the war, she joked of having a bath in an upstairs bath when a bomb exploded, and worrying she’d end up naked on the ground floor in her “birthday suit”.

A shoebox of letters sent by Richard Smith’s mother to her own mother during the Second World War provided a candid view of a professional Australian woman’s life in London during the war.

“Then the letters become blacker, I reckon by the time you get to the last letter, she was a really depressed woman,” Richard said.

Away from home and her fiancée Wob, she worried about her fertility. “By now my uterus is possibly a crusted & withered organ - that would yield nothing but an emu’s egg - It’s a crushing shame, but I guess we can rise above most things & remember, ‘It’s a lovely day tomorrow!’.”

She didn’t give birth to emus but to two children, Richard and his sister, Susan.

Winifred died on December 24, 1965 aged 54 from complications from Parkinsons disease.

Richard said his parents were “very Victorian” in their family life.

“There was never great affection to each other, but then again, I never heard a cross word to each other or to myself or sister,” he said.

“We were always of the belief that it was a match made in heaven. When you read the letters, it wasn’t as simple.”

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