Letter from Alan North to Joan Strong
Title
Letter from Alan North to Joan Strong
Description
[pages 1 and 2 are missing]
Alan writes that he has been in London. He travelled back by train and ferry. Then via Brussels and then train the next day into Germany where a lot of the towns had been bombed.
[more pages missing]
Alan writes that he has been in London. He travelled back by train and ferry. Then via Brussels and then train the next day into Germany where a lot of the towns had been bombed.
[more pages missing]
Creator
Date
1946-06-16
Temporal Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Language
Format
Six handwritten sheets and envelope
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
ENorthWAStrongJ460616-Part
Transcription
On Active Service
[postmark] [18 JU 40]
Miss J Strong,
46 Barkley Road,
Leicester,
England. [underlined]
[page break]
F/s north. W. A. 1583475
98 Sqd. 139 Wing
B.A.F.O. R.A.F.
c/o B.A.O.R.
[page break]
Pages 1 and 2 missing
3 [underlined] 16.6.4 [deleted] indecipherable number [/ deleted] 6
heck of a lot since I last saw you dear.
Arrived in London on let me see, Tuesday afternoon; Fortunately another F/s turned up going to Hamburg so he was “good” for I.C. party and after a bit of “haggling” I got a warrant and permission to make my own was back by any convenient route, so was able to spend the night in London and travel down to Dover on Wednesday morning, where I caught the afternoon boat to Calais.
The weather was perfect for
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
the crossing.
As we left the harbour I could just see the dim outline of Cap Gris Nez – about 22miles away. It would have been wonderful if only you could have been with me, you would have enjoyed watching the gulls catching pieces of bread we were throwing to them, before the bread reached the water.
I spent Wednesday night in Calais and caught a train to Brussels on Thursday morning.
It was drizzling on the way
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
up to Brussels but was fine when we arrived there, I spent a very pleasant afternoon wandering round some of my old haunts and in the evening went to the flicks and saw the V Parade, there were some good shots of it passing through Trafalgar Square but unfortunately none of them included our barricade near St. Martins.
The train going through Cologne left at some unearthly hour of the morning I didn’t feel like getting up to catch that so caught
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
a later train to Krefeld about 60 miles N. W. Of Wahn.
On the way the train passes through the very heavily bombed area around Munchen Gladbach, Krefeld of course is an awful mess as well.
In spite of all the recent reports in the papers, I must say I could’nt [sic] see any noticable [sic] deterioration in the [deleted] indecipherable word [/ deleted] health of the people – some of them were still at their old occupation of digging amongst the ruins.
One thing that stuck me
[Page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
was the number of small allotments that seem to have sprung up all over the place, a lot of the people were working on there. They seemed to [missing word] getting on quite well and the crops appear very promising. On arrival at Krefeld I rang up Wahn and found out that one of our trucks was bringing some demob’s up to the transit camp there on Friday night and returning on Saturday. So slept at the transit camp on Friday night and returned to Wahn yesterday.
[page break]
[underlined] 8 [/underlined]
Most of the boys seem to go away for the weekends now – the mess is almost deserted in fact.
I saw the Wing Bombing Leader though, who informs me that a lot of the old boys have been demobed [sic] during my absence and on 98 Sqd. now Jackson and myself are the only two left who are qualified to analyse bombing excercises [sic]. As Jacko went on leave last week the work has just been piling up. He wants me to start instructing tomorrow but
[page break]
[missing page]
[postmark] [18 JU 40]
Miss J Strong,
46 Barkley Road,
Leicester,
England. [underlined]
[page break]
F/s north. W. A. 1583475
98 Sqd. 139 Wing
B.A.F.O. R.A.F.
c/o B.A.O.R.
[page break]
Pages 1 and 2 missing
3 [underlined] 16.6.4 [deleted] indecipherable number [/ deleted] 6
heck of a lot since I last saw you dear.
Arrived in London on let me see, Tuesday afternoon; Fortunately another F/s turned up going to Hamburg so he was “good” for I.C. party and after a bit of “haggling” I got a warrant and permission to make my own was back by any convenient route, so was able to spend the night in London and travel down to Dover on Wednesday morning, where I caught the afternoon boat to Calais.
The weather was perfect for
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
the crossing.
As we left the harbour I could just see the dim outline of Cap Gris Nez – about 22miles away. It would have been wonderful if only you could have been with me, you would have enjoyed watching the gulls catching pieces of bread we were throwing to them, before the bread reached the water.
I spent Wednesday night in Calais and caught a train to Brussels on Thursday morning.
It was drizzling on the way
[page break]
[underlined] 5 [/underlined]
up to Brussels but was fine when we arrived there, I spent a very pleasant afternoon wandering round some of my old haunts and in the evening went to the flicks and saw the V Parade, there were some good shots of it passing through Trafalgar Square but unfortunately none of them included our barricade near St. Martins.
The train going through Cologne left at some unearthly hour of the morning I didn’t feel like getting up to catch that so caught
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
a later train to Krefeld about 60 miles N. W. Of Wahn.
On the way the train passes through the very heavily bombed area around Munchen Gladbach, Krefeld of course is an awful mess as well.
In spite of all the recent reports in the papers, I must say I could’nt [sic] see any noticable [sic] deterioration in the [deleted] indecipherable word [/ deleted] health of the people – some of them were still at their old occupation of digging amongst the ruins.
One thing that stuck me
[Page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
was the number of small allotments that seem to have sprung up all over the place, a lot of the people were working on there. They seemed to [missing word] getting on quite well and the crops appear very promising. On arrival at Krefeld I rang up Wahn and found out that one of our trucks was bringing some demob’s up to the transit camp there on Friday night and returning on Saturday. So slept at the transit camp on Friday night and returned to Wahn yesterday.
[page break]
[underlined] 8 [/underlined]
Most of the boys seem to go away for the weekends now – the mess is almost deserted in fact.
I saw the Wing Bombing Leader though, who informs me that a lot of the old boys have been demobed [sic] during my absence and on 98 Sqd. now Jackson and myself are the only two left who are qualified to analyse bombing excercises [sic]. As Jacko went on leave last week the work has just been piling up. He wants me to start instructing tomorrow but
[page break]
[missing page]
Collection
Citation
Alan North, “Letter from Alan North to Joan Strong,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed July 26, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/47634.
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