A short while ago I promised to post some extracts from my mother's cousin's letters, sent while he was serving in the RAF during the first part of the Second World War. His name was William "Bill" Aubrey SEYMOUR and his family lived in Amber Hill, near Boston. He was an Air Gunner/Radio Operator in the RAF. The letters are from his training and operational service to my grandparents (Joseph and Katherine HUGGINS) and my uncle (Herbert HUGGINS). Bill died on 30 April 1940 during mission, I believe over Norway. Because letters were delivered so quickly in those days, they aren't dated as we would today, but rather say such things as "Sunday morning" or "Thursday Dinner-time"; quaint but not much help with exact dating. We have envelopes, some of which have postmarks but there are fewer envelopes than letters with several letters in each envelope and a virtual guarantee that they have been shuffled at some point. A few years ago I started trying to trace a lot of the references in the letter, some of which help with placement, others with dating, my cousin, who is also ex-RAF, did some work on them too. Maybe some day I will spend some real time on them, and maybe even publish them in their entirety, and with full annotation, so I won't post the full text but I will dig out some Lincolnshire references. Searching my email archive I found that I already posted an extract of one letter on the list in 2005. Here goes again with that one... (Monday Night, RAF Feltwell, Norfolk) I get bags of flying now, when the weather is O.K. in fact I think I shall soon want a new Log Book to keep my flying times in. We have been over to Berner's Heath two or three times for shooting practice, I bet there must be a lot of dead rabbits there now. On the Saturday after I got back, we went up to Catfoss, near Scarboro' in Yorkshire to do some practice bombing and air firing. We flew just over the outskirts of Boston, dead over Hubbert's Bridge, Amber Hill and South Kyme. I saw our house very plainly (we were only about 1,000 feet up) and I could even see the postman going down the fen. We ran into a lot of fog over North Lincolnshire, somewhere around Scunthorpe Way and we went up to 4,000 feet to get above it, and it wasn't very hot up there on that particular morning, I can tell you. We didn't land at Catfoss, we just did our bombing and firing and then returned home, the whole trip taking 3 hours. I was perched in my "nest" the whole of the time, and only once did the pilot call me up on the inter-comm. I sang to myself to pass the time away coming back. I had a good mind to switch the microphone on, I bet somebody would have had something to say to me then. I think we are going to Catfoss again next Saturday, so look out for us about 9 or 10 o'clock time. We were coming up Boston way today to do some air firing over the Wash but visibility was rather bad this morning so the programme was postponed until tomorrow. However, we had a little "flip" over to Mildenhall and Newmarket this morning to practise "ZZ" landings, which is a method by which a 'plane can be brought right over the aerodrome by wireless, when visibility is practically zero. Regards Simon