The war letters of Raymond Stanley Jordan

"When dawn came around everyone was trying to count the ships in the escort armada. It was so wonderful to see a large aircraft carrier, the HMS Formidable and the flagship Arc Royal and numerous smaller warships. But as the sun was now shining the German dive bombers would be coming looking for us. That was the most frightening thing in the war – being dive bombed, especially at sea. They arrived at about 9 am and the sky became blacked out by the bursting A/A bombs being sent up by our naval guns... The dive bombers stayed around until their fuel got low and we quietly pushed our way into harbour at Port Said to be told that the Germans and Italians had taken Tobruk and were heading for Cairo. The enemy was winning on all fronts." These are the surviving letters that Raymond Stanley Jordan wrote home while serving during the Second World War, starting in 1940 while training in Australia, going through to early 1942, just prior to his journey to Ceylon, then back to Australia on the HMS Devonshire for leave, prior to his deployment to New Guinea in 1943.