Letter from Harold Gorton to his wife

Letter from Harold Gorton to his wife

He writes about life at RAF Cark, other officers who have been promoted, and studying for his law exams.

1943

Three handwritten sheets

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.

EGortonHGortonLCM431119

Cork,

Friday.

Dearest,

I hope your cold is quite cured now despite the bad weather we’ve been having. It’s been pretty cold here, but I’ve been able to keep warm. I’m writing this in the Mess in front of a red hot log fire, & the fire will have warmed my room [deleted] before [/deleted] by the time I get there.

Gilligan is away on commission leave. It came through while I was away. It is back dated 9 months, but he has to wait 2 ½ months before he gets his F/O & then that will be back dated. Funny isn’t it?

I was a bit shaken

[page break]

2

yesterday to learn that all the Flying Control blokes have been made F/Lts. We’re all feeling pretty cheesed about it, because theirs is a pretty poor job & they’re all quite new officers – just got their F/Os. The only one who deserves it is an ex W/O who has done 1000 operational hours.

Otherwise, there’s not much news. I start O.C. night flying tomorrow, [deleted] indecipherable word [/deleted] but Thursday will be my last night, so it shouldn’t be much trouble.

As usual, I’ve done no work since I’ve been back. We shall have no pupils until next Thursday, & I haven’t been near

[page break]

3

an aeroplane yet.

One good thing I’ve discovered is that I can read Law during the day in the Education Block where there’s a reading room that no one goes into during the day. That’s quite useful as the Mess is impossible for reading, & I’m not supposed to light my own fire before 6.0 p.m.

Let me know when you’ve any news.

All my love,

Harold.