Letters from Lieutenant Colonel Peter F. White

Letters from White to his family while on military service in Gibraltar, Iraq, India and Sierra Leone.

Peter Francis White was born on the 22 April 1899 in Putney, London, England. After attending Rugby School and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich White was commissioned into the Royal Engineers on the 6 June 1918. He spent the years 1919 to 1930 serving overseas, except for a period when he returned to England to attend Jesus College, Cambridge (he became a BA in 1926). Whilst overseas White was part of an expedition to East Greenland led by James Wordie. He attained the rank of Captain in 1929.

Between the years 1930 and 1944 White held various Staff appointments in England. During World War II he served with the Anti-Aircraft forces and on D-Day he landed in Normandy with the task of building airfields; for his services he was awarded the OBE. After the war White was stationed in Singapore where he remained until 1950 at which point he retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room and a handlist is also available for this collection.

Listed as no. 1257 in Manuscript Collections of Africana in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, compiled by Louis B. Frewer (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1968) and as nos. 353 and 421 in Manuscript Collections (excluding Africana) in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, compiled by Louis B. Frewer (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1970).

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Deposited with the Oxford Colonial Records Project.