Letter from Harold Gorton to his wife

EGortonHGortonLCM430726.pdf

Title

Letter from Harold Gorton to his wife

Description

He writes of the situation in Italy and his night flying as well as his social life. He also mentions the Commanding Officer of RAF Cark receiving the Air Force Cross from the King.

Creator

Date

1943-07-26

Temporal Coverage

Spatial Coverage

Coverage

Language

Format

Four handwritten sheets

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

EGortonHGortonLCM430726

Transcription

OFFICERS’ MESS,
ROYAL AIR FORCE,
CARK,
NORTH LANCASHIRE.
TELEPHONE GRANGE 390
26/7/43
Dearest,
I got your watch back on Saturday (5/-) & it has kept perfect time since then. What annoyed me was the fact that the instrument basher had been on night flying, not on leave, so that I could have given it to you on Thursday had I known. He said that he had taken the whole thing to pieces & got rid of the old oil that had been clogging it up; it’s certainly going very well now.
It seems to me rather a pity that you should have to wait a month for it. If I can find a suitable box &
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2
packing, I’m going to send it on to you, but I promise I won’t send it unless I’ve made trebly sure that no harm will come to it.
Now the Group invasion is over, the C.O. is on leave, collecting his A.F.C. from the King. Incidentally, the main criticism last week was that we hadn’t got lightning conductors on some of our buildings!
Yesterday I flew over the Forestry camp that Farnworth Grammar School is running. I didn’t beat them up, but let them know I was there, & it was amusing to see the boys waving their handkerchiefs to me. If the weather is good on Wednesday, I’ll cycle out
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there & see the staff. Tomorrow night I think I’ll pay Miss Westwood a visit, as it’s a fortnight since I’ve been there.
I’m night flying tonight, but I don’t know whether it will clear up in time. It all depends on when a front passes over.
Incidentally, did you find the perspex ring? If you didn’t, it doesn’t matter, but if you send it back, I’ll try & finish it off for you.
What about the news from Italy? Looks hopeful, doesn’t it? Or do you think it will stiffen Italian resistance.
Personally, I suspect that every one of them really knows that
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he's beaten, & not Badoglio nor the King of Italy will be able to pull them together.
Anyway, we shall see.
All my love,
Harold.
P.S. I’ve asked Alice to call about your bike.

Collection

Citation

Harold Gorton, “Letter from Harold Gorton to his wife,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 28, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/8964.

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