FAC159/1/120

Letter: from Richard Dillingham at No 21 Kite & Balloon Section RFC Camp, [France] to Christine Dillingham at Kings Road, Flitwick - writer hopes his wife and children are all right; - notes they are having some lovely weather; - comments on Monday afternoon they had an airfight over the camp but the Taube [German aircraft] managed to get away; - notes he was one of a party of men told to look out for German machines coming over the camp, "One came over the balloon very high up and one of the antiaircraft batteries fired at him and managed to hit him. He started spinning round in the air as he came down. By this time several of our machines were around him to make sure of him. When he got within about 100 feet of the ground he managed to right his machine and tried to get away but our machine guns started firing for all they were worth so he was forced to land about 1/2 a mile from the camp and by what we hear in the camp it was one of their latest planes" - expects she will get more war news in the newspapers than they hear; - notes there is some very heavy fighting going on "Our troops seem to be carrying all before them, they seem very cheerful over it and think they have got Fritz well beaten"; - comments he was surprised to hear that Frank Palmer was home on leave and had been in hospital with Trench Foot; - comments he knew Tom Virgin and P Lamb were in hospital with the same thing, "Last winter was a fair terror out here and there were a lot of the poor beggars got that in the trenches and some were frozen to death"; - asks if S Beal has had to leave the station and who now is the porter?; - expects the children want to help with the garden and wishes he was there to do it for them;

August 1917

From: 1917 To: 1917

item

Dillingham, Richard,
Dillingham, Christine,
Palmer, Frank,
Virgin, Tom,
Beal, S,
Lamb, P

military balloons, military aircraft, newspapers, porter, trench foot, Germans, hospitals, CHILDREN, World War One, FLITWICK, France