Letter from Douglas Hudson to his parents
Title
Letter from Douglas Hudson to his parents
Description
Catches up with mail received both ends. Writes of cables sent and received including problems with some and costs. Catches up with news from home and mentions camp numbers will be trebled in the next few days. Thanks them for the trouble they are taking to send him parcels and says how pleased he was to get the first one. Comments on storm (thunder, rain and sand) they are having and hopes that summer is nearly over. Comments that they will see from photographs how brown he is.
Creator
Date
1942-08-18
Temporal Coverage
Language
Format
Two page handwritten letter
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
EHudsonJDHudsonP-HE420818
Transcription
Royal Air Force. 755052. Sgt. J. D. Hudson
c/o Consul General des Etats Unis.
Rue Michelet.
Alger. Algerie.
Afrique du Nord.
18-8-42
My Dear Mother & Dad,
I was very pleased to receive your letters dated June 30th & July 27th, Nos 57 & 65, this morning. The former envelope bares[?] the post mark Skipton & it has taken longer to get here than the [indecipherable word]. The arrival of these two letters means that all letters except No. 11 of the first sixty-five have reached me safely. This is very satisfactory, & it is also very comforting to learn from your latest cable that you received twenty-two of my letters since July 11th & to know that the first two cables I sent off in August reached you. My cable received by you on the morning of June 30th left my hands on June 13th & was in reply to your telegram of June 6th. The message I sent read
------” regret delay in replying unavoidable” ----- this was in no way due to indisposition on my part, I was quite well at the time. Causes beyond my control, of which alas I cannot speak, were responsible. I agree with you that 4½d per word is a ridiculous price to pay for telegrams, and I hope you will agree to my last cabled suggestion to cancel the “receiver to pay” system & revert[?] to the old way satisfactory idea of pre-paid replies, which are much cheaper. To date I have not used the
[page break]
“receiver to pay” system at all so you should not receive any debit at your end. I am glad to hear John is more comfortably situated and hope he will not be required to move afield. We expect our numbers to be trebled in the next few days which will make it pretty terrible & crowded. Enough said, I suppose you will have read the papers & heard the wireless. It is splendid of you to take all the trouble you are doing in sending parcels to me. The contents of the July 28th parcel sound to be just the ticket & will be really useful. I wired you, & mentioned in my past two letters, how pleased I was to receive your first Red Cross parcel on August 12th, perfectly intact. Splendid show. As for my relations & their coupons[?], to be frightfully [inserted] rude [/inserted] they can – well you know what they can do with their coupons.[?] At the moment of writing we are having a terrific mixed storm – thunder, rain and sand, which is a sign of hope that the very worst of the summer heat is nearly over. Enclosed are two photos which will show that I am not slimming. I am not looking very happy I admit, but the sun was so terrifically bright it was not easy to beam pleasantly with[?] the camera. You will probably be able to see from the ‘photo of me sitting down how brown I am. The other one taken standing up shows the tide line around my waist. I am hoping to get enlargements later on more carefully printed. These[?] are very hurried jobs complete[?] in one photo with photographer’s finger “points”[?]. Good-bye until next letter. All my love, thoughts & best wishes.
Douglas.
c/o Consul General des Etats Unis.
Rue Michelet.
Alger. Algerie.
Afrique du Nord.
18-8-42
My Dear Mother & Dad,
I was very pleased to receive your letters dated June 30th & July 27th, Nos 57 & 65, this morning. The former envelope bares[?] the post mark Skipton & it has taken longer to get here than the [indecipherable word]. The arrival of these two letters means that all letters except No. 11 of the first sixty-five have reached me safely. This is very satisfactory, & it is also very comforting to learn from your latest cable that you received twenty-two of my letters since July 11th & to know that the first two cables I sent off in August reached you. My cable received by you on the morning of June 30th left my hands on June 13th & was in reply to your telegram of June 6th. The message I sent read
------” regret delay in replying unavoidable” ----- this was in no way due to indisposition on my part, I was quite well at the time. Causes beyond my control, of which alas I cannot speak, were responsible. I agree with you that 4½d per word is a ridiculous price to pay for telegrams, and I hope you will agree to my last cabled suggestion to cancel the “receiver to pay” system & revert[?] to the old way satisfactory idea of pre-paid replies, which are much cheaper. To date I have not used the
[page break]
“receiver to pay” system at all so you should not receive any debit at your end. I am glad to hear John is more comfortably situated and hope he will not be required to move afield. We expect our numbers to be trebled in the next few days which will make it pretty terrible & crowded. Enough said, I suppose you will have read the papers & heard the wireless. It is splendid of you to take all the trouble you are doing in sending parcels to me. The contents of the July 28th parcel sound to be just the ticket & will be really useful. I wired you, & mentioned in my past two letters, how pleased I was to receive your first Red Cross parcel on August 12th, perfectly intact. Splendid show. As for my relations & their coupons[?], to be frightfully [inserted] rude [/inserted] they can – well you know what they can do with their coupons.[?] At the moment of writing we are having a terrific mixed storm – thunder, rain and sand, which is a sign of hope that the very worst of the summer heat is nearly over. Enclosed are two photos which will show that I am not slimming. I am not looking very happy I admit, but the sun was so terrifically bright it was not easy to beam pleasantly with[?] the camera. You will probably be able to see from the ‘photo of me sitting down how brown I am. The other one taken standing up shows the tide line around my waist. I am hoping to get enlargements later on more carefully printed. These[?] are very hurried jobs complete[?] in one photo with photographer’s finger “points”[?]. Good-bye until next letter. All my love, thoughts & best wishes.
Douglas.
Collection
Citation
J D Hudson, “Letter from Douglas Hudson to his parents,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 25, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/22832.
Item Relations
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