Letter to Dennis Batty from brother Phil

Letter to Dennis Batty from brother Phil

Thanks him for last letter and describes a daylight German attack near his office. Two bombs dropped nearby but did not explode and were dealt with by Royal Engineers. Two oil bombs were also dropped, but these landed on waste ground. Mentions life in the office and fleet air arm attack on Italian navy. Catches up with news and gossip from home. Mentions their Dad is on ARP duty that night.

1940-11-13

Two page handwritten letter

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.

EBattyPHBattyAHD401113

175, Ingram Rd.
Bloxwich

November 13th 1940

Dear Denis,

Many thanks for your last letter was glad to know you were not a close friend of soldier Jack. Well we had a bit of a scare on Monday a jerry took advantage of the low lying clouds to pay us a daylight visit. He dived out of the clouds and swept over our offices about 50’ from the ground. He dropped a 1000lb. bomb right between the two large gas containers luckily it did not explode on hitting the ground and the R.E.s soon had it out and away. Two oil bombs were also dropped but the [sic] dropped on waste ground and only caused a blaze for a minute or so. Work goes on as usual, we have had another *girl at our offices to swell the ranks of the all talk and no work brigade as that’s about all they are good for. What do you think of the fleet air arm 3 battleships and two auxiliaries

[page break]

not bad for a days work that will give Musso something to think about. Was not surprised to hear about you and Kath can see you are following in my footsteps like a true brother. Tess is going on fine she gets a regular rogue a proper woman nose into everything always talking etc. etc. Dad is on A.R.P. duty to-night so there is bound to be a raid not as it worries anyone just to let us know they havent [sic] forgotten us. Eileen is rather upset says she hasnt [sic] had a letter from you for ages so take a tip and write or you will be in hot water [underlined] when [/underlined] you come on leave. Thats [sic] all for the present so aurevoir [sic] best of luck

[underlined] Philip [/underlined].

*P.S. Elle est une belle dame – (trés Belle)