Love and War - Allen Martin

A story, ordinary in other times, extraordinary against the backdrop of war, of a couple from comfortable middle class homes, their relationship sustained through six long years of separation, by correspondence and brief interludes of leave.

As Stanley fights from Normandy to Germany, experiencing the brutality and privations of war, Peggy strives to maintain a normal life, as a nurse and then a mother.

After victory, Stanley's time as part of the army of occupation requires him to administer both German civilians and military, and to attend the Belsen trial, seeing, at first hand, the cruel face of Nazism. The story evolves around the correspondence, the couple baring their souls to each other, absence sometimes leading to increasingly explicit sexual fantasising. And for Stanley, there is apprehension about the mundanity of life in a time of peace, and the reality of a relationship so embellished ­by imagination.