Letter from Alan North to Joan Strong

Letter from Alan North to Joan Strong

Alan writes that he should be getting leave from 22nd December for 12 days. He has been flying patrols despite the weather.
[some pages are missing]

1945-12-02

Four handwritten sheets and envelope

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ENorthWAStrongJ451202

[envelope]
ON ACTIVE SERVICE
[postmark]
3 Dec 1945
Miss J. Strong,
46 Barkby Road,
Leicester,
[underlined] England [/underlined]
[inserted] [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted]
1[deleted] 5 [/deleted] 8
2-12-45
[/inserted]
[page break]
F/s North. W.A. [indecipherable word] 475
98 Sqd. 139 Wing.
B.A.F.O. R.A.F.
c/o B.A.O.R.
B.A.O.R.
[page break]
Sunday Night 2nd Dec.
Dearest Joan,
Hope you will be pleased to hear that I had a very successful little chat with the Adj. on Wednesday and all being well I should arrive home on the 22nd December 1945 for 12 days leave over Christmas and the New Year, Wizard!!
Ken and myself were also called into the”Old Mans” lair on Wednesday morning – to explain the circumstances of our rather extended stay in the U.K. He tried to remain serious about it but we finished up by laughing it off, although he said the A.O.C. thought we should
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
have pressed on, he personally didnt [sic] blame us for not sticking our necks out under the circumstances, but if we thought we were going to dodge our duties we were sadly mistaken – he certainly wasn’t kidding! We had both missed a 24 hour duty during our absence so on Thursday Ken was duty pilot and I duty Nav. we also did a patrol on Wednesday afternoon – Friday morning I spent in bed, I’m not usually a heavy sleeper but Jimmy nearly had to tip me out of bed to wake me up at lunch time, I strolled across to flights after lunch still feeling rather tired, to find we were down for another
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
patrol, we took off about 14.30 hrs with a Vis. of about four miles [deleted] and [/deleted] that was obviously tending to close in, with a cloud base of 2,000’ it was quite clear over Germany but when we returned to base about 17.00 hrs. the Sun was just sinking and the whole area was covered with a low ground haze – we couldnt [sic] see a thing, after five G.C.A.s and much twitching we managed to get in O.K. though.
I retired to bed immediately after tea and slept like a log until 08.00 hrs Saturday morning.
The morning I spent trying to catch up with a lot of odd jobs that have a nasty habit of accumulating I worked solidly until 2 Oclock [sic]
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
and was quite pleased with my mornings work, I returned to the mess for a late lunch about half past and waited for the mail to come in at 3 Oclock [sic].
There was a whole pile of it but of course nothing for “Joe”
I had hoped there might be a letter from you dear, I’m afraid I felt horribly depressed not hearing from you for a whole week darling, I tried to cheer myself up a little with visions of a nice warm shower, but when I arrived I found the water was ice cold – it certainly woke me up, but it didnt [sic] improve the state of my mind.
I read “A Study in Scarlet” one of Conan Doyles [sic] Sherlock Holmes novels