25 December 1936
To Bob · Telephone: No 217 uxbridge
Dear Bob:
What kind of a Christmas did you have? Today a slight fog is on the ground but it is not cold. - I am sitting in the Officers' Mess here and walk on the same ground as Ball, Mannock and all the other aces that passed through here. Their pictures adorn the walls. The room is very huge with beams of walnut along the roof. A huge fireplace is in the middle of the north wall and crackling flames are shooting up the chimney - at any rate it is very comfortable. I'd like nothing better but to take you with me on a cross-country. We would probably start on a miserable damp day with murky clouds overhead but we would soon push through them and come above. The roof of the clouds sometimes is flat for miles but sometimes hills and valleys are formed. You get a real sensation of speed plunging up and down the hills and valleys or driving right through them and an occasional loop to shake the cob webs. The Hawk Trainer is a very fast machine but I go on Hawker Harts on Jan. 9 and you can ease stick back and things really happen in them.
I am enclosing a real colour picture of EL, my old machine. This is what it actually looked like in the air. - How would you like to caress the stick of this machine? I have eased this machine through many loops.
Well so long for now
Bill
royal air force,
uxbridge.