Letter to David Donaldson from his brother Ian
Title
Letter to David Donaldson from his brother Ian
Description
Christmas card with seasons greetings and writes of life in India including sports and drill. Catches up with family news.
Creator
Date
1943-12-16
Temporal Coverage
Coverage
Language
Format
Two page handwritten letter with cartoon decoration and envelope
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
EDonaldsonIDonaldsonDW431216
Transcription
XMAS CARD
[Stamps]
WING/COM D.W.DONALDSON D.S.O. D F C .
[deleted] R.A.F FALDINGWORTH
LINCOLN[\deleted]
DANESHILL FARMHOUSE
OXSHOTT
SURREY
ENGLAND
[page break]
Written in ….. ENGLISH
(No......15/032
Sender's(Rank...F/O
(Name...DONALDSON
[page break]
Dear Willy
This is to wish you, Joyce and Anna a happy Christmas and all the rest of it. I hope you manage to get some leave for the occasion. You can tell your wife that this [pointer to drawing of Indian couple in bottom left hand corner of document] is just like India except that the poor woman usually has her family hung all round her as well & there are usually at least four
[printed] CHRISTMAS 1943 /printed] P.T.O.
[page break]
women to each Indian, - so she had better not come out here. But I was forgetting that she is much travelled & knows all these things.
We continue to live a peculiar life and have recently become expert in ceremonial drill, our chief diversion in life being the time honoured sport [character deleted] of driving the permanent staff mad. We have only scored one complete success so far but several more have every appearance of being on the verge.
How is your distinguished daughter. Let me know sometime, what are her latest accomplishments; I'm sure Joyce can invent some, even if she hasn't any new ones. Also what are you doing yourself. I'm afraid Lincolnshire must be a cheerless place by now?
The prospects here are very obscure and range from asst adj down to WOP/AG as far as I can see, in fact almost anything that I know nothing about. Still the shines [?] & bananas are cheap, even if nothing else is, so I don't lose much sleep, (except when wakened by drunken Canadians trying to bathe in the water tank, or Indians gargling in the small hours, or other tropical noises.
Have a nice Christmas
Love and kisses
Ian
I am eagerly awaiting the day when Norman appears in Bombay in a topee. But I suppose it's too much to hope for.
[Stamps]
WING/COM D.W.DONALDSON D.S.O. D F C .
[deleted] R.A.F FALDINGWORTH
LINCOLN[\deleted]
DANESHILL FARMHOUSE
OXSHOTT
SURREY
ENGLAND
[page break]
Written in ….. ENGLISH
(No......15/032
Sender's(Rank...F/O
(Name...DONALDSON
[page break]
Dear Willy
This is to wish you, Joyce and Anna a happy Christmas and all the rest of it. I hope you manage to get some leave for the occasion. You can tell your wife that this [pointer to drawing of Indian couple in bottom left hand corner of document] is just like India except that the poor woman usually has her family hung all round her as well & there are usually at least four
[printed] CHRISTMAS 1943 /printed] P.T.O.
[page break]
women to each Indian, - so she had better not come out here. But I was forgetting that she is much travelled & knows all these things.
We continue to live a peculiar life and have recently become expert in ceremonial drill, our chief diversion in life being the time honoured sport [character deleted] of driving the permanent staff mad. We have only scored one complete success so far but several more have every appearance of being on the verge.
How is your distinguished daughter. Let me know sometime, what are her latest accomplishments; I'm sure Joyce can invent some, even if she hasn't any new ones. Also what are you doing yourself. I'm afraid Lincolnshire must be a cheerless place by now?
The prospects here are very obscure and range from asst adj down to WOP/AG as far as I can see, in fact almost anything that I know nothing about. Still the shines [?] & bananas are cheap, even if nothing else is, so I don't lose much sleep, (except when wakened by drunken Canadians trying to bathe in the water tank, or Indians gargling in the small hours, or other tropical noises.
Have a nice Christmas
Love and kisses
Ian
I am eagerly awaiting the day when Norman appears in Bombay in a topee. But I suppose it's too much to hope for.
Collection
Citation
Ian Donaldson, “Letter to David Donaldson from his brother Ian,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 26, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/14922.
Item Relations
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