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ABSTRACT
Across military service, fighting personnel have continually made efforts to provide comfort to loved ones beyond the grave. The ‘last letter’, a practice in which servicemen would write a letter to be given to parents or loved ones in the event of their death, makes a rich site to explore intimate and profound expressions of selfhood, morality, and society. Across temporal, geographical, and cultural spaces, these letters capture a moment when someone is forced to confront their mortality. As a distinct genre of writing, last letters provide an insight into how airmen conceptualised and interacted with national discourses around their service, identity, experiences, and memorialisation, during the war itself. Unlike letters, diaries, and memoirs, the last letter in particular speaks to how airmen sought to be remembered whilst still serving. Through an intimate analysis of last letters, this article explores how aircrew faced their own mortality, negotiating their masculine, national, and spiritual identities and communicated this to their loved ones.
KEYWORDS:
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Notes
1. British Newspaper Archives (BNA), ‘The Last Letter’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, May 15, 1917, 2.
2. Royal Air Force Museum (RAFM) B3977, ‘Last Letter’ by Pilot Officer Arthur Reginald Schofield, to be sent in the event of his death’, July 28, 1942.
3. Ibid.
4. Chris Everett and Martin Middlebrook calculate the loss of 55,500 aircrew and according to the International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC), 57861 men and women lost their lives in support of Bomber Command during the Second World War; P. Jalland, Death in War and Peace: Loss and Grief in England, 1914–1970 (Oxford, 2010), 142; C. Everett and M. Middlebrook, The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book 1939–1945 (Surrey, 2011), 708; IBCC, ‘A Story of Discovery, Education and Remembrance’, https://internationalbcc.co.uk (accessed August 12, 2019).
5. Houlbrook, “‘A Pin to See the Peepshow’: Culture, Fiction and Selfhood in Edith Thompson’s Letters, 1921–1922”, Past and Present 207, (2010), 215–249, 248.
6. Day-Lewis, Last Letters Home, 3–5.
7. For additional examples of last letters see: Yad Vashem, ‘Last Letters From the Holocaust: 1941’, https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1941/index.asp#/overview (accessed August 12, 2019); M. Jones, The Last Great Quest: Captain Scott’s Antarctic Sacrifice (New York, 2003).
8. Day-Lewis, Last Letters Home, (Cambridge, 1995); S. Price, If You’re Reading This: Last Letters From the Front Line (London, 2011).
9. Jones, 10, 13.
10. M. Wells, Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War (London, 1995), 28, 31–33.
11. MacKenzie, Flying Against Fate, 7.
12. Wells, Courage and Air Warfare, 28, 74–75.
13. This refers to the performativity of gender laid out in J. Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London, 1997) and J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, 1999); J. Butler, Undoing Gender (New York, 2004), 209–212; R. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge, 2005), 70.
14. Connell, Masculinities, 68.
15. Butler, Undoing Gender, 209–212.
16. Analysed at length by Peter Gray, Alex Bellamy and Mark Connelly – among others – the morality of warfare remains debated among academics. See P. Gray, Air Warfare: History, Theory and Practice (London, 2016), and A. Bellamy, ‘The Ethics of Terror Bombing: Beyond Supreme Emergency’, Journal of Military Ethics 7 (2008), 41–65. For discussions regarding its morality in the public eye, during the war, see M. Connelly, ‘The British People, the Press and the Strategic Air Campaign Against Germany, 1939–45’, Contemporary British History, 16 (2002), 39–58. For discussions of public opinion and the remembrance of bomber command see M. Connelly, Reaching for the Stars: A New History of Bomber Command in World War II (London, 2001), and F. Houghton, ‘The “Missing Chapter” Bomber Command Aircrew Memoirs in the 1990s and 2000s’, in L. Noakes and J. Pattinson (eds.), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (London, 2014), 155–174.
17. Wells, Courage and Air Warfare, 1.
18. Houghton, The Veterans’ Tale, 6.
19. Francis, The Flyer, 172.
20. Snape, God and The British Soldier, 28.
21. Ibid; Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 4–5.
22. Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 4–5.
23. C. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000 (Abingdon, 2001), 8; Snape, God and the British Soldier, 20–23.
24. Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 142.
25. Connelly, Reaching for the Stars, 1.
26. Noakes, Dying for the Nation, 195.
27. C. Hämmerle, ‘“Waiting longingly … ” Love Letters in the First World War – a Plea for a Broader Genre Concept’, History of Emotions – Insights into Research (2014), 2.
28. L. Noakes, ‘Communities of Feeling: Fear, Death, and Grief in the Writing of British Servicemen in the Second World War, in Total War: An Emotional History, (eds.) L. Noakes, C. Langhammer, & C. Siebrecht, (Oxford, 2020) 116–136, 118–122.
29. Houghton, The Veterans’ Tale, 9.
30. J. Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (London, 2006), 139.
31. J. M. Strange, Death, Grief, and Poverty in Britain, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, 2005), 109–115; Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 7.
32. Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 2.
33. J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War In European Cultural History (Cambridge, 2014), 224.
34. Dawson, Soldier Heroes, 2.
35. Roper, The Secret Battle, 47.
36. Dawson, Soldier Heroes, 2.
37. C. Siebrecht’, The Female Mourner: gender and the moral economy of grief during the First World War’, in Christa Hämmerle Birgitta Bader-Zaar & Oswald Überegger (eds.) Gender and the First World War (London, 2014), 144–162, 147; Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty; Jalland, Death in War and Peace.
38. Gloucestershire Archives, (GA) ‘An Airman to his Mother’, The Times, June 18, 1940, D4851; see also available online at IBCC Digital Archive, ‘An airman to his mother’, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/10224 (accessed August 11 2022).
39. BNA, ‘An Airman to his Mother’, Kent & Sussex Courier, June 21, 1940, 2; ‘An Airman to his Mother’, Londonderry Sentinel, June 22, 1940, 6; ‘An Airman to his Mother’, Staffordshire Advertiser, 4; ‘The Letter an Airman Left for his Mother’, Clitheroe Advertiser and Times, June 28, 1940, 8; ‘An Airman to his Mother’, Sunday Post, September 26, 1943, 6; ‘Letter from Airman to his Mother’, Kirkintilloch Herald, April 25, 1945, 3; ‘Letter from Airman to his Mother’, Milngavie and Bearsden Herald, June 2, 1945, 4; Francis, The Flyer, 122; News UK Archives, ‘An Airman’s Letter to his Mother’, August 24 2018,
40. GA, ‘An Airman to his Mother’, The Times, 18 June 1940, D4851.
41. L. Noakes, Dying For The Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (Manchester, 2020), 193.
42. Ibid.
43. L. Wittman, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body (London, 2011).
44. Sites of Memory, 1.
45. GA, ‘An Airman to his Mother’, The Times, 18 June 1940, D4851.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.; Houghton, The Veterans’ Tale, 221.
48. Houghton, The Veterans’ Tale, 217–219.
49. S. Rose, ‘Temperate Heroes: Concepts of Masculinity in Second World War Britain’, in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester, 2004), 177–198, 183.
50. S. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2003), 183.
51. J. Bourke, Rape: A History From 1850 to the Present (London, 2007), 367.
52. GA, ‘An Airman to his Mother’, The Times, June 18, 1940, D4851.
53. Francis, The Flyer, 122.
54. RAFM, B3889 ‘Final letter home of Sgt John Outram Ludgate, written to be posted in the event of his death’ (undated).
55. Siebrecht, ‘The Female Mourner’,144–147.
56. IBCC Digital Archive, Clough, ‘I have no regrets dying for my country’.
57. Ibid.
58. RAFM B3889 ‘Final letter home of Sgt John Outram Ludgate, written to be posted in the event of his death’ (undated).
59. IWM Private Papers of J.L.S. Dunlop, 12 June 1941, available online at https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030008424 (accessed July 16, 2019).
60. IWM Private Papers of J.L.S. Dunlop, 12 June 1941.
61. Ibid.
62. BNA ‘No Regrets’ Last Letter From Young Airman, Dundee Evening Telegraph, April 2, 1943, 4.
63. Rose, Which People’s War?, 153–154; P. Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea From Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (London, 2006), 153, 168, 227.
64. BNA ‘No Regrets’ Last Letter From Young Airman, Dundee Evening Telegraph, April 2, 1943, 4.
65. Ibid.
66. IBCC Digital Archive, George Warren, ‘Letter to Mrs Warren from George Warren’, available online at https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/26838 (accessed July 21, 2021).
67. IBCC Digital Archive, John Chatterton, ‘Letter of condolence from John Chatterton to parents of Sergeant Peter Lees parents after his loss’, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/7075 (accessed June 16, 2022).
68. Ibid.
69. Francis, The Flyer, 134.
70. Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 144–147.
71. IBCC Digital Archive E. Milling, ‘Letter to his wife from Edward Milling’, February 20, 1943, available online at https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/1182 (accessed June 17, 2019).
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. IBCC Digital Archive, I. Wynn, ‘Letter from Ian Wynn to his wife’, December 28, 1942, available online at https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/11791 (accessed July 24, 2019).
75. IBCC Digital Archive, J. Turner, ‘Letter to Kaye Turner from John Turner’, September 1, 1939, available online at https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/18226 (accessed September 4, 2019).
76. IBCC Digital Archive, I. Wynn, ‘Letter from Ian Wynn to his wife’, December 28, 1942.
77. IBCC Digital Archive, J. Turner, ‘Letter to Kaye Turner from John Turner’, September 1, 1939.
78. IBCC Digital Archive, I. Wynn, ‘Letter from Ian Wynn to his wife’, December 28, 1942.
79. Ibid.
80. IBCC Digital Archive, E. Milling, ‘Letter to his wife from Edward Milling’, February 20, 1943.
81. Ibid.
82. IBCC Digital Archive, E. Milling, ‘Letter to his wife from Edward Milling’, February 20, 1943.
83. IBCC Digital Archive, G. Wilson, ‘Letter to his wife from George Wilson’, 17 January 1943, available online at https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/1227 (accessed June 31, 2019).
84. IBCC Digital Archive, G. Wilson, ‘Letter to his wife from George Wilson’, January 17, 1943.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Francis, The Flyer, 122.
88. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, 8; Snape, God and the British Soldier, 20–23.
89. J. Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge, 2019), 678–681.
90. IWM 74/93/1 Private Papers of MA Scott: Two ‘In the Event of My Death Letters’ dated 21/08/1940 and 07/05/1941; Jalland, Death in War and Peace, 143.
91. IWM 74/93/1 Private Papers of MA Scott: Two ‘In the Event of My Death Letters’ dated 21/08/1940 and 07/05/1941.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. IWM 74/93/1 Private Papers of MA Scott, dated 07/05/1941.
95. IBCC Digital Archive, ‘If I should ever die’, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30984 accessed July 12, 2022.
96. Ibid.
97. Ibid.
98. GA, “An Airman to his Mother”, The Times, June 18, 1940, D4851.
99. RAFM, J. Ludgate, ‘Final Letter home’, undated, B3889; A. Schofield, ‘Last Letter’, July 28, 1942, B3977.
100. GA, ‘An Airman to his Mother’, The Times, 18 June 1940, D4851.
101. IBCC Digital Archive, C. Barton, ‘Cyril Barton VC’, 18 July 1943, available online at, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/17243 (accessed September 4, 2019).
102. Ibid.
103. IBCC Digital Archive, C. Barton, ‘Cyril Barton VC’, 18 July 1943.
104. Ibid.
105. IWM 74/93/1 Private Papers of MA Scott, dated 21/08/1940.
106. IWM 93/5/1 Private Papers of E.F. Rawlings.
107. IBCC Digital Archive, J. Turner, ‘Letter to Kaye Turner from John Turner’, 1 September 1939, available online at https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/18226 (accessed September 4, 2019); RAFM, J. Ludgate, ‘Final Letter home’, undated, B3889; A. Schofield, ‘Last Letter’, 28 July 1942, B3977.
108. RAFM, J. Ludgate, ‘Final Letter home’, undated, B3889; A. Schofield, ‘Last Letter’, July 28, 1942, B3977.
109. IWM Private Papers of J.L.S. Dunlop, June 12, 1941, available online at https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030008424 (accessed July 16, 2019).
110. Ibid.
111. IWM Private Papers of J.L.S. Dunlop, June 12, 1941, available online at https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030008424 (accessed July 16, 2019).
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid.
115. IWM Private Papers of J.L.S. Dunlop, 12 June 1941, available online at https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030008424 (accessed July 16, 2019).
116. Ibid.
117. Snape, God and The British Soldier, 245.
118. RAFM, J. Ludgate, ‘Final Letter home’, undated, B3889; A. Schofield, ‘Last Letter’, July 28, 1942, B3977.
119. Francis, The Flyer, 134.
120. Francis, The Flyer, 134.
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Eleni Eldridge-Tull
Eleni Eldridge-Tull is a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham. Her PhD is researching masculinities, the self and spirituality within the Royal Air Force in 1930s and 1940s Britain. At its core, it analyses the subjective experience of aircrew during this time, focusing in particular on the negotiation of martial and civilian identities within British society and culture. Exploring the intersection of the airmen’s service and domestic lives, it informs the formation, negotiation, and performance of identity within broader military discourse surrounding training, technology, stress, and ethics. It employs a wealth of private correspondence, visual culture, and Air Ministry papers to understand the multifaceted ways in which airmen understood themselves in a moment of modern warfare.