Book Description

— The real and private correspondence of a Birmingham working-class teenager who joined the RAF during wartime — Many previously unpublished and very rare photographs — A Lancaster gunner’s personal perspective on the hardships and realities of RAF life, training and active operations — More than just an RAF story: a love and family story with an unpredictable and emotional conclusion — The story behind the story – the discovery of these fascinating letters, which lay undiscovered for 65 years Flight Lieutenant Joseph Thompson, aka ‘Mac’, left his mother’s small Birmingham home in December 1943 at the age of 18 to join the wartime RAF. Letters from a Lancaster Gunner follows his journey through the hardship and adventure of basic and gunnery training, a love affair with a girl from Liverpool, crew friendships, losses and disasters, over twenty Lancaster bombing raids, a virgin mission, which ends in a ‘ditching’ in the North Sea, and a post-war stint in Singapore. Joe’s original letters and his mother’s replies are the narrators of this story, which begins and ends with the events surrounding their re-discovery some 65 years after they were written. The wartime experiences of the family Joe left behind also unfold. A mother, widowed in 1941, struggling to cope physically, financially and emotionally with four children during wartime, while working full time in a factory. There is much love, detail and hardship in these letters, which ultimately end with heartbreak that could not have been foreseen.