Love letters from wartime affair published by daughter

Katie Walker and Dr Brian Thomas wrote 300 'beautiful' love letters to each other

Hundreds of love letters revealing a passionate wartime affair between a doctor and a nurse have been published by their daughter.

Swansea-born Brian Thomas, 34, fell in love with Katie Walker, 23, in Austria at the end of World War II.

When Dr Thomas returned to Britain, the pair wrote ardent love letters to each other every day.

Publishing the letters, Loraine Fergusson said it was "wonderful to hear their voices again".

The 61-year-old writer has carefully transcribed more than 300 letters and published them online.

When her parents met, Dr Thomas was already married but his first wife had met someone else.

After the divorce, the couple married in 1947 and were together until Dr Thomas's death in 1982. His widow died in 2009.

Ms Fergusson said: "I always knew the letters were there but mum said to me, 'Don't read them while I'm alive because there's soppy stuff between me and dad'.

"So for the first few years after mum died I didn't look at them, but it's been four years now since she died and it's wonderful to hear their voices again."

The couple were married for 35 years

The letters reveal an intense love between Dr Thomas and his wife, who he gave the pet name Boofuls.

In one of the letters, he writes: "My dearest adorable lovely Katie. Oh darling, you really are the most incredible wonderful person in all this wide world and you make me so terribly happy.

"I still can't (and never will) get over the incredible miracle of you loving me.

"All my life I dreamed of loving such a person as you - someone who would love me and say dear sweet things to me and make me feel happy inside.

"Oh darling dearest Boofuls, I do just adore you. Isn't it amazing that a love like we've got can actually make one happy though we're apart?

Dr Thomas died in 1982

"That you should love me in spite of all the dreary snags I've got, just fills me with wonderment."

However, when they met, Dr Thomas was still married. He married his then girlfriend, Kit, two weeks before being posted abroad with the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1942.

But after a year in Algiers and the Middle East, Dr Thomas returned home to discover his wife had met someone else.

He returned to his duties in Italy, then to Graz in Austria where he met Katie.

Dr Thomas proposed on a moonlit bridge in 1945 and divorced his estranged wife.

Ms Fergusson said: "They had a very earthy, naughty sense of humour and that's so apparent in the letters."

Mrs Thomas was given the pet name 'Boofuls' by her husband

Indeed, in one letter Mrs Thomas wrote: "Darling one, it's just as well you aren't here as you would probably have to spank me hard - but what a heavenly spanking!"

As Ms Fergusson embarked on reading and transcribing the letters she said was "confident" the notes would not get racier.

She said: "In those days, they didn't have sex before marriage and the letters were beautiful - there was passion but of a much higher level."

Dr Thomas and his wife settled in Hereford where they brought up two children - Loraine and her brother Peter.

He worked as an orthopaedic surgeon at the Hereford County Hospital until his retirement in 1975.

But Dr Thomas fell ill seven years later.

Ms Fergusson said: "I knew they were dotty about each other. After my father had his coronary mum stayed by his bedside every day. And one day she asked, 'Do you need anything?'

"'Only you' he told her. That was pretty much the last thing he said to her."

Mrs Fergusson said: "After he died mum said to me they had spent 35 wonderful years together so she could not complain.

"I think that's wonderful."