Widow Reunited With Love Letters Sent By Sailor Husband

Marjory Day with the letters (Picture: SWNS).

The widow of a Royal Navy sailor has been reunited with love letters from her husband, 45 years after she lost them.

Marjory Day and her late husband David, wrote to each during his 12 years in the Royal Navy in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mr Day wrote hundreds of letters to his wife but when Ms Day moved house in the 1970s, she thought she had lost her treasured letters forever.

But nearly 50 years later, a man carrying out renovation work at Ms Day's former house in Dunfermline found them in the floor space of the attic.

Ms Day described being reunited with the letters as a "story of fate". She said: "I didn't sleep for two days when I was told what had happened.

"I thought I had lost them years ago and I didn't even tell my family - I felt so embarrassed to tell them. I just felt so guilty.

"But now since these letters have come back to me, it seems to be a story of fate.

"You didn't have a phone or anything like you do now to communicate. He spent weeks away so all we could do was write to each other every night.

"Some of the letters would be pages and pages long."

Her husband joined the Navy at 16-years-old in 1954, serving until 1967.

Eighty-eight-year-old Ms Day said her late husband would write "every night to me and all of them said he missed me."

Alistair Hogg, who found the letters, said: "I had been trying to put a piece of timber down but something was stopping it.

"I then pulled a naval certificate out and put it to the side but the timber still wouldn't go down and then I realised there was a stack there and up came Ms Day's letters.

"I'm just grateful they are back with their rightful owner as if I hadn't found them they probably would have been lost forever."

The couple met on a night out when Mr Day's ship docked in Rosyth, Fife and went on to have four children together.

After leaving the Royal Navy, Mr Day joined the Police and briefly worked as a salesman.

Ms Day says she is "so thankful to Alistair" for finding the letters.