Letter from Albert Evans to Mary and Bill Edwards

Letter from Albert Evans to Mary and Bill Edwards

The letter to his sister and brother in law thanks them for their letter. he says he enjoys their short outings together. He has been over Berlin. He has been in hospital with a suspected skin disease.

Five handwritten sheets and an envelope

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.

EEvansAEdwardsW-M[Date]-020001, EEvansAEdwardsW-M[Date]-020002, EEvansAEdwardsW-M[Date]-020003, EEvansAEdwardsW-M[Date]-020004, EEvansAEdwardsW-M[Date]-020005, EEvansAEdwardsW-M[Date]-020006

[postmark]

Mr & Mrs. W. Edwards,
2 Leabrook Road,
(Near Boat Inn)
Leabrook,
Wednesbury.
[underlined] S. Staffs. [/underlined]

[page break]

[Royal Air Force crest]

Pilot Officer Evans. A.
RAF. Station,
Dunholme Lodge
[underlined] Lincoln [/underlined]

[underlined] Saturday [/underlined]

Dear Mary & Bill,

Thanks a lot for your letter of Monday night which I received on Thursday. I would have replied to it earlier, but duty called and I couldn’t get any time, in fact, on Thursday I failed to write to Mick, and that is practically the first day I’ve missed since a long time before we were married. But then, all good records have to be broken at some time, don’t they?

I’m glad that you had a good time on our recent outings together, and it is a great pity that these times have to be so short, but we live in hopes of far better days to come. Mick is very unselfish

[page break]

[underlined] 2 [/underlined]

about that really, because as you know I’m always dashing off here and there, often without her, but we’ve made up our minds that we will have more time on our own next time. By that, of course, I mean cutting out old Hall, Dudley office & a few other, undesirables. They can’t expect me to visit them every leave, can they?

Those raids which you mention were, in the main, Mosquito efforts, but I hope you were thinking of me at 9 oclock [sic] on Thursday night because at that very minute I was adding my “block buster” to the number already giving some Berlin resident a headache! It was quite a thrill to be over the “big city,” as we call it, but we only had opportunity for appreciating it because we had surprised the defences.

[page break]

[underlined] 3 [/underlined]

It makes a nice entry in my log book, but personally, I’ll leave Berlin to those who feel like going through a wall of steel and about 500 fighters. It can prove very dangerous! As things turned out, we weren’t troubled a lot, but we couldn’t make base because of petrol shortages so we spent the night on an aerodrome near Cambridge. You see we go visiting all sorts of places!

I feel sorry for you & [indecipherable word] this week; what’s it feel like to be a grass widow? Maybe Mick could tell you if you really can’t make up your mind! If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you to send that book on to me, because I don’t get much time to

[page break]

[underlined] 4 [/underlined]

read whole books at home, as you may guess. I’ll take good care of it, and I’m sure I shall enjoy it.

Finally, your P.S. No, I didn’t forget mom’s birthday, and although I wasn’t able to get her a card I wrote a letter to reach home on Tuesday and wished her many happy returns in that.

Well, I haven’t been able to tell you much news, but there really isn’t much to tell. On Tuesday I had to go to Halton hospital for a suspected skin disease, but an examination found nothing wrong beyond a mild attack of balanitis, so I came back here on Wednesday. It’s always best to be on the safe side and let the doc. make sure, isn’t it?

[page break]

[underlined] 5 [/underlined]

And there I will close, so goodnight to you both, good luck, and keep smiling. We’ll soon finish this job – and Berlin – off soon!

Your loving brother,
[underlined] Albert [/underlined]

X X X X