To Jessie from Harry Redgrave

To Jessie from Harry Redgrave

A letter from Harry to his wife Jessie. Harry details the bad weather, which has closed roads and stopped the post from arriving. He has spent all day clearing snow drifts on the camp.

1940-01-29

Two handwritten sheets

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.

ERedgraveHCRedgraveJM400329-0001,
ERedgraveHCRedgraveJM400329-0002

[RAF Crest]

Redbrae
Monkton
Prestwick
Ayrshire
Mon 29th 40

[inserted] Jan [/inserted]

My dear Jessie,

According to the wireless railway communication between England and Scotland is at a standstill so I dont [sic] know when you will get this. I do hope your letters are not held up too long as I am longing to hear from you. Have you had a recurrence of this dreadful weather in the South? In Scotland roads are blocked with snowdrifts and trains cannot get past Dumfries. We had no Sunday papers yesterday and only Scottish papers today. I told you in my letter of yesterday what an awful day we had had and I think today has been worse. True we have had no more snow but we have been out all day in a biting East wind shovelling snow. The entrance to one of the largest hangars was completely blocked by a snowdrift about four feet deep and we had to dig channels about twelve feet wide to be able to get the planes out. As it was we could not get the Fokkers out so we were not able to fly. During the afternoon we had to clear the road across the drome [sic] which in part was blocked by drifts about six feet deep.

[page break]

By five oclock [sic] I was completely exhausted and only to [sic] glad to get to back [sic] to my billet. The bottoms of my trousers were frozen stiff and as I went to shake the snow off the seemed to [deleted] of [/deleted] crack. Well anyhow tomorrow we shall be at the mill so we shall be spared snow clearing. Last night while writing your letter the boys started to play pontoon and later I joined them for an hour but was not successful and lost a few shillings. This is first [sic] game of cards I have had away from home and made a nice change. Well dear its [sic] ten oclock [sic] and I want to do a couple of Trig problems before I go to bed so will write more tomorrow. Goodnight love I shall dream of you. Xxxx

Teusday [sic]

Any letters of yours have not got through yet but I am looking forward to one tomorrow. As one of the boys are [sic] going down to the post I will close this letter now so you can get it earlier. If I dont [sic] post it tonight I shall not be able to do so until tomorrow night.

Lots of love to you and Pam

from Your loving husband
Harry. xxxx