Enemy action

My parents were married in August 1946 at the Catholic church in Sidmouth, Devon.

I have one of the cards given to them on that day. It's handmade, with the front presenting a delicately painted watercolour image of a pine tree set in a misty landscape. A bird perches on a lower branch with a string in its beak on which two wedding rings hang.

The greeting is 'Congratulation on your wedding from...'

Inside are the signatures of twenty-six German prisoners of war. My father was their supervisor on the road-improvement project on which they were working prior to repatriation.

I'm pleased that they must have liked and respected my father enough to make this gift for him and his bride.

I'd imagine that quite a few of them are still alive, well on in their eighties and nineties.