Letter from Mervyn Adder to his father

Letter from Mervyn Adder to his father

Letter and explanatory note. Catches up with news of father's activities. Mentions he had done quite a few operations recently including Augsburg, Schweinfurt and Stuttgart. Writes that they had to divert to a fighter base on the south coast and had to stay a couple of days and he describes activities there including a visit to Brighton. Concludes with news back at base and mentions upcoming leave.

1944-03-04

Seven page handwritten letter, envelope and printed explanatory note

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SAdderM175073v10087, SAdderM175073v10086

[postmark HULL 4 March 1944]

[two postage stamps]

Mr. A. Adder
c/o Regional Column,
Wetherby Grange,
Wetherby
Yorks.

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[Royal Air Force crest]

SERGEANTS’ MESS,
ROYAL AIR FORCE STATION,
DUNHOLME LODGE,
LINCOLN.

Thursday

Dear Father,

I am sorry I haven’t answered your letter sooner but we have been away from Base for several days, and I only received your very welcome letter just before we left last Friday night.

I am pleased to hear that you are getting good food, especially as they seem to be making you do plenty of route marches, I had a letter from Mother yesterday and she mentioned that you had done a six mile route march. Anyhow I hope you are keeping fit and are having a good time.

We have done quite a few raids recently, being on the Schweinfurt and

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Augsburg raids last week, and were on again last night when we visited Stuttgart for the second time. We did very well on the Schweinfurt raid and brought back some good photographs, and one of them was of the arming point – we were very pleased about this.

Coming back from the Augsburg raid we had to land on the South Coast and put down on a Fighter drome early on Saturday morning. We had to stop there until yesterday morning as the weather was too bad up here to allow us to get back, we couldn’t understand the reason for this as the weather was so good where we were, until we flew back yesterday morning and saw the [inserted] heavy [/inserted] snow all over the country. The weather where we were [deleted] at [/deleted] was simply

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grand, fairly warm with sunshine all day, and these few days did us a lot of good, and we were sorry when we had to come back.

There was a small town only two miles from Camp and we spent nearly all our evenings there, going to the flicks every night. On Sunday we knew early that we shouldn’t be going back that day so had the whole day in front of us, and after breakfast Johnny, Gerry and I walked into town together, where we went to church. The walk back made us [deleted] very [/deleted] ready for something to eat, [deleted] and [/deleted] the food in the Mess was fairly good, and I thought a little better than the food we get

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in our own Mess.

After dinner we all walked down to the Station and caught the electric train to Brighton, which wasnt [sic] very far away. We had a wizard time here, although we felt rather conspicuous walking about in our flying [deleted] f [/deleted] boots, sweaters etc., however after a quick look round we turned into a café and had a good meal. After this we went to watch an ice-hockey match England V Canada, it was the first I had seen and I enjoyed it very much, it’s a very fast game and therefore good to watch. Coming out of here we went along to ‘Sherrys’, where despite our flying boots we

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danced and had a very good time. Our train left at eleven o’clock and by then we had spent nearly all the small amount of money we happened to be carrying with us, but had had a very enjoyable day.

We came back yesterday to find that several crews had been sent on leave the day before, as they thought the stand down had started and the weather was then fairly bad, and now we are having to wait [deleted] f [/deleted] a little longer for our leave (which should start on Saturday). We weren’t very pleased about this and

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are still hoping that we still might get away by Saturday, however I might get some more news about this tonight so will leave this letter open so that I can let you know. How long are you going to be at Wetherby and are you you [sic] able to get home for the weekend?

You know that we had our photographs in the paper a few weeks ago well I am going to write tonight for a few of these photographs and will let you have one as soon as I get them.

Well I think that is all the ‘gen’ for the moment so cheerio and look after yourself.

Your loving Son,

Mervyn.

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4 March 1944

This is Mervyn’s last letter to his father Alexander. Dated by the postmark as 4 March it seems unlikely that he made his leave the following week as he hoped as he was killed ten days later. It would appear that Granddad had volunteered for some activity despite his advancing years and had gone on a six mile route march. Again, he describes his adventure in Brighton and enjoying the dance at Sherrys.