Letter from Mervyn Adder to his brother Alex
Title
Letter from Mervyn Adder to his brother Alex
Description
Letter with explanatory note. Writes of recent posting to Scarborough and complains about training activities undertaken. Catches up with family news. States that food is good but not enough of it and comments on weather and his accommodation. Asks after Joan.
Creator
Date
1942-04-29
Temporal Coverage
Coverage
Language
Format
Five page handwritten letter and printed note
Conforms To
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
SAdderM175073v10028, SAdderM175073v10027
Transcription
[Royal Air Force crest]
1459790 AC2 Adder M.
‘D’ Flight
2 Squadron
No 11 I T.W
Scarborough.
Wednesday.
Dear Alex,
As you will see from the address, or perhaps heard of from home, I had been posted before your letter arrived at Viceroy and by some [indecipherable word] I have received [inserted] it [/inserted] only a day after I should have done if I had been at Viceroy. There are some strange happenings in the RAF nowadays aren’t there!
I have been devilishly lucky being posted so near home but I can tell you there is a hell of a lot of
[page break]
bullshit here too. For instance this afternoon we had a kit inspection and of all the bulls that was one, instead of turning all your junk out and putting it back as they were chalked off, we had to lay it all out to the nearest inch, folded in a certain manner, and all missing articles noted on a piece of paper, which was stuck in the place where it [inserted] them [/inserted] should have been – and so it went on.
You are very lucky to be in private billets and I am pleased to hear about this new course you are taking and hope you are successful in this and also as regards the leave. Although they don’t give leave here when you are on a course I am going to try for 48 hrs later on when I settle down and know the ropes a little
[page break]
better.
I had a letter from Mother with the same post as yours, in fact I had four letters, and it also had been to Viceroy along with the rest, and it also arrived here safe & early – strange isn’t it, although I suppose coincidences do occur sometimes. Mother also told me about Dad being knocked down at work however he is getting along alright now and I suppose he must have bruised his thigh badly for Mother said he had a ‘nasty thigh’.
The food here is fairly good as compared with Viceroy and the only drawback is that you never [inserted] seem [/inserted] to have enough unless of course you can manage to go round twice.
The weather is grand here, which helps to
[page break]
make you hungry and ever since we have been here there has been a very strong, and bracing wind blowing in from the sea and as we are stuck in a Hotel right on the edge of an exposed part of the Prom. we certainly feel it. It’s the Prince of Wales’ Hotel we are in and it is in the South Bay just below Oliver’s Mount, I don’t know whether you know it as we didn’t go to Scarborough very much – did we! Unfortunately I am not in a room facing the sea as most of the rooms do, but you certainly have a grand view of the Bay looking out of the windows in this room, which is called the Bay Room, and is used for our library, [deleted] and [/deleted] I like to write my letters here although at the moment it’s very draughty.
[page break]
How is Joan now? Do you write to her more often – I hope so!
I will have to sign off now as I want to write home tonight so I will say cheerio for the present and keep smiling.
All the Best
[underlined] Mervyn [/underlined]
P.S. Please excuse scribble – in a hurry
[page break]
29 April 1942
The Viceroy that Mervyn refers to in this letter is Viceroy Court, St. John’s Wood which was Lord’s Cricket Ground where recruits were sent for initial training, medicals, uniforms etc. He went there on 29 March 1942.
He found out that he had been posted to Scarborough on 23 April 1942. I believe that the Prince of Wales Hotel below Oliver’s Mount, no longer exists. Will try to find out if it has been re-named as I would love to go there. He is enjoying Scarborough but finding the drills petty.
1459790 AC2 Adder M.
‘D’ Flight
2 Squadron
No 11 I T.W
Scarborough.
Wednesday.
Dear Alex,
As you will see from the address, or perhaps heard of from home, I had been posted before your letter arrived at Viceroy and by some [indecipherable word] I have received [inserted] it [/inserted] only a day after I should have done if I had been at Viceroy. There are some strange happenings in the RAF nowadays aren’t there!
I have been devilishly lucky being posted so near home but I can tell you there is a hell of a lot of
[page break]
bullshit here too. For instance this afternoon we had a kit inspection and of all the bulls that was one, instead of turning all your junk out and putting it back as they were chalked off, we had to lay it all out to the nearest inch, folded in a certain manner, and all missing articles noted on a piece of paper, which was stuck in the place where it [inserted] them [/inserted] should have been – and so it went on.
You are very lucky to be in private billets and I am pleased to hear about this new course you are taking and hope you are successful in this and also as regards the leave. Although they don’t give leave here when you are on a course I am going to try for 48 hrs later on when I settle down and know the ropes a little
[page break]
better.
I had a letter from Mother with the same post as yours, in fact I had four letters, and it also had been to Viceroy along with the rest, and it also arrived here safe & early – strange isn’t it, although I suppose coincidences do occur sometimes. Mother also told me about Dad being knocked down at work however he is getting along alright now and I suppose he must have bruised his thigh badly for Mother said he had a ‘nasty thigh’.
The food here is fairly good as compared with Viceroy and the only drawback is that you never [inserted] seem [/inserted] to have enough unless of course you can manage to go round twice.
The weather is grand here, which helps to
[page break]
make you hungry and ever since we have been here there has been a very strong, and bracing wind blowing in from the sea and as we are stuck in a Hotel right on the edge of an exposed part of the Prom. we certainly feel it. It’s the Prince of Wales’ Hotel we are in and it is in the South Bay just below Oliver’s Mount, I don’t know whether you know it as we didn’t go to Scarborough very much – did we! Unfortunately I am not in a room facing the sea as most of the rooms do, but you certainly have a grand view of the Bay looking out of the windows in this room, which is called the Bay Room, and is used for our library, [deleted] and [/deleted] I like to write my letters here although at the moment it’s very draughty.
[page break]
How is Joan now? Do you write to her more often – I hope so!
I will have to sign off now as I want to write home tonight so I will say cheerio for the present and keep smiling.
All the Best
[underlined] Mervyn [/underlined]
P.S. Please excuse scribble – in a hurry
[page break]
29 April 1942
The Viceroy that Mervyn refers to in this letter is Viceroy Court, St. John’s Wood which was Lord’s Cricket Ground where recruits were sent for initial training, medicals, uniforms etc. He went there on 29 March 1942.
He found out that he had been posted to Scarborough on 23 April 1942. I believe that the Prince of Wales Hotel below Oliver’s Mount, no longer exists. Will try to find out if it has been re-named as I would love to go there. He is enjoying Scarborough but finding the drills petty.
Collection
Citation
M Adder, “Letter from Mervyn Adder to his brother Alex,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 24, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/33242.
Item Relations
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