EJ Saunders

BThickettPSaundersEJv10003.jpg

Title

EJ Saunders

Description

A biography written by his daughter about her father. It describes his early years but mainly his time in the RAF.
Photo 1 is of EJ Saunders.
Photo 2 is EJ Saunders cycling on an egg and spoon race.
Photo 3 is his Mother, Francis and Father.
Photo 4 is a cycling race.
Photo 5 is his sister, Marjorie.

Creator

Date

2013-10

Temporal Coverage

Coverage

Language

Format

Five b/w photographs
Two printed sheets

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

BThickettPSaundersEJv10003

Transcription

[black and white photograph}

Daddy, Papoos, Sam, left us some fascinating bits and pieces from his time in the War; there are many early photographs, notes, a logbook and scraps of paper, everything from telegrams, to newspaper clippings. He also talked a little about the war years but never with great detail or particular pride, with some effort he was encouraged to list significant events. What follows here is his story, no doubt with many gaps and mistakes but also with some amazing adventures.

The photographs came mainly from the years 1941 to 43, once involved in flying in Mosquitos he was far too busy to take more, that's until he met Mummy. But the log book takes up the flying story and tells us what he got up to.

It seems extraordinary that early on he had a camera at all; he hardly ever took pictures in later life and yet here it's almost as if he had a camera with him all the time.

It was Daddy's Log Book that helped to piece things together and give a sense of order to the pictures, it was a great starting point and should have been handed back at the end of the war. The RAF museum at Hendon took a copy of the logbook and helped in ordering events and then there were some notes written by Daddy himself.

[page break]

[four black and white photographs]

So here is the family, it must be about 1940. Mother, Francis and Father, Sidney and sister Marjorie looking like they are really happy together, Daddy is seen cycling in an Egg and Spoon race! He was a member of the National Cycling Union, we have his badges for that.

He knew Croydon and London, he cycled, he had a warm and happy family and he was bright. He was a scholarship boy with school reports that showed him to be clever, over talkative and sometimes badly behaved. On leaving school he went to Southampton and started training in the Civil Service as a Customs and Excise Officer, he lived in the YMCA.

Citation

Penny Thickett, “EJ Saunders,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed December 5, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/25323.

Item Relations

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