Letter from Donald Baker to his mother

Letter from Donald Baker to his mother

Reports arrival of latest letters and hopes his are getting through. Mentions arrival of parcel and list some contents. Writes that he will need a new pair of pyjamas. Comments on land settlement in Rhodesia for ex-servicemen. Mentions starting a garden outside his window and that there are 5 showers for 1500 of them.

1944-10-10

Handwritten prisoner of war letter form

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.

SBakerDA19210428v20157

Kriegsgefangenenpost

[underlined] MIT LUFTPOST AB ILAIRO [/underlined]

[postmark] GEPRUFT 70 [/postmark]

[postmark] 61214 -13 [/postmark]

An Mrs C. BAKER

CHARLTON

Empfangsort: INYAZURA

Staße: SOUTHERN

Kreis: RHODESIA

Land: SOUTH AFRICA

[postmark] Mit Luftpost Par Avion [/postmark]

[postmark] Taxe perçue RM. 25 PI. [/postmark]

[underlined] Gebührenfreil [/underlined]

Landesteil (Provinz usw.)

Absender

Vor- und Zuname: F/O DONALD ARTHUR BAKER

Gefangenennummer: 665

Lager-Bezeichnung: Kriegsgefangenenlager der Luftwaffe Nr. 3

Deutschland (Allemagne)

B

[page break]

My Dearest Mother, your letter of the 23rd July, [inserted] 10-10-44 [/inserted] most recent so far, arrived today as well as a few from England. I do hope you’re getting my letters a bit quicker now so that you won’t have to worry so much. You can always be sure that though the mail doesn’t get through very fast we are not [one indecipherable word] bad and plugging along O.K. Also had a parcel from Ticky dated 27th July - 3 1/2lbs chocolate, towels khaki shirt & shorts, 2 prs socks & the usual toilet stuff. And also a lovely “novelty” bag which looks too smart to put mere toothbrushes etc into. The khaki shirt is pretty warm and I’ll appreciate it this winter if we’re here. By the time you get this I shall be needing another pr of pyjamas - again if we’re still here. One of the Rhodesians here had a bit of news from home concerning the plans for land settlement in Rhodesia for ex servicemen. We were very encouraged at the interest the Gov’t is taking in this respect but I should like to know for certain what the scheme is roughly, if you can let me know. I have been preparing the space of ground under our windows, called the garden, for next year on the off chance - there are about 8 shovels for 1500 of us so you can imagine how much time we have. Tell Buster to write, tell us all about the dehydration in Rhodesia - as usual we’ve only heard rumours of it. Theres the end of the page again. Good night dear mother Love to you all from Donald